
i 



1 n 



1*-''^^$^'^^ (Mr 




t 




Class fS dJ^Z^ 
Book. • Ko' 

COPYRIGHT DEF»OSIT. 



/: 



; 



THE VAGABONDS 



AND OTHER POEMS 



BY 

J. T. TROWBRIDGE 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY 

F. O. C. DARLEY 



INCLUDING A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF THE 

AUTHOR BY 

PROF. H. L. WILLIAMS 



NEW YORK 

HURST & COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



lUBRARY of O0NGRESs| 

I wo Cooies Kecowd6 | 

OCT 7 VrfOal 



I-r^VtHMMMaMnMHi 






Copyright, 1908, 

BY 

HURST & COMPANY 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Preface 7 

The Vagabonds 97 

MiSCEIvLANEOUS. 

By the River "5 

The Pewee ^^3 

My Brother and I ^3^ 

The Last Rally ^39 

The Maskers ^47 

Ser\'ice ^^^ 

The Frozen Harbor ^59 

The Jaguar Hunt ^75 

Beyond • ^^5 

The Cup ^^9 

The Color-Bearer • ^95 

The Wonderful Sack 203 

The Wild Goose 221 



PREFACE. 



On going through our anthologies, 
the question is humiliating in its lack 
of a rebutting answer : " Is there any 
American Poetry?" Nature is as gen- 
erous of her masterpieces in her gallery 
here as elsewhere, though they are not 
polished and varnished to tameness. 
The result of outdoor seekings after 
indoor reflection — apart from the tram- 
mels laid down by pedants and peda- 
gogues is American. Life is our en- 
velope as droll, doleful and divine as 
under any sun. Only, we do not use 
words morally *' red-flagged," and we 



8 preface* 

choose those flowers of speech which 
shelter the fruit in its earliness. There 
are pebbles, too, in our clear brooks, but 
useful : the Goliath of Mammon may 
well dread the missiles that a David 
would choose for his attack. Abroad, 
it is enough that a story is well told ; 
here, we insist on the story being worth 
telling. 

It is shallow and insufficient to palliate 
with the assertion that our decoctions 
from a draft of the one English source 
must remain of similar substances ; water 
becomes, under man's manipulation and 
skill, wine, beer, or quintessence : color, 
aspect, even quality, not to say special 
flavor, can be imparted, and the crystal 
clear disappears when changed to ruby, 
topaz, or sapphire. 



The trul}^ popular poet is the one whose 
choice morsels are rolled on the tongue ; 
carried in the mind and repeated off the 
lips to ears that will likewise transport 
them afar. These authors are not those 
shelved behind glass and referred to. 
Their effect must strike the heart, and 
haunt. Without naming the few merit- 
ing this grade, our subject claims the 
preference for figuring at all the reading 
and elocutionary ^' bees " these fifty years. 
Impossible to glance through the follow- 
ing leaves without recognizing gladly old 
favorites '^ familiar as household words," 
while selections from the writer's stories 
and essays sprinkle more arid spots with 
bloom and verdancy. 

Nothing speaks more forcibly for the 
steady, serene and active life, our ideal, 



10 preface* 

than this one, prolific but of considered 
outcome, that of a tree properly nourished 
and pruned, which, even if of woodland 
origin, thrives by the home, perfuming it 
in spring, sheltering it in winter and 
giving succulence in the harvest-tide. 

John Town send Trowbridge was born 
on the night of the 17th of September — 
or in the morning next, for the occurrence 
was on the tick — 1827. It was under the 
Presidency of John Quincy Adams, and 
has passed under those of twenty succes- 
sors, including Roosevelt. The latter, as 
a New Yorker, was also the governor of 
his state, for the poet's cradle rocked in a 
log-cabin in the Genesee's fertile valley, 
near Rochester. The workmen were 
blowing up the rocks and hurling out 
the earth where the Indians' corn had 



preface. 1 1 

yellowed, for the just-commenced Erie 
Canal. 

His father was a pioneer who felled the 
trees for his humble house within the 
roar of the splendid Falls from whose 
spray a bard ought to have drunk inspira- 
tion to immortalize its hero — Sam Patch 
the high leaper, our parallel to Schiller's 
*' Diver." The timely-wrought ballad is 
ignominious. 

His parents came of English yeomen 
stock. The man was so lowly in station 
as to be bound out; in service, a kind of 
slavery so antiquated, patriarchal and 
opposed to the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence, that the playful threat to impose 
the yoke on his son terrified any insub- 
ordination out of him. Young John 
submissively ran the gamut of clearing 



\Z preface* 

and settling : trimming with ^^ His little 
hatchet'^ the wild cherry trees felled by 
the axe, burning brush, chinking up the 
house walls, hoeing the corn into the 
frosty sods, and running to sleep in the 
garret. Exposed to the northwest bliz- 
zards, he and his brother snuggled up as 
the fine snow sifted in and powdered 
them ; it is pathetic while mirthful to see 
them, clothes on arm and shoes in hand, 
rushing down-stairs to dress by the blaze 
of the undying huge wood fire on the 
hearth. Coal was as yet a mineral curi- 
osity to set on the mantel-piece. Stoves 
came in later when anthracite was under- 
stood, and the two boys could thaw out 
after exposure in the snow-drifts, with 
both putting their feet from opposite 
sides in the oven of the Franklin, Such 



homely incidents appear in Trowbridge's 
chronicles of this life, as remote to ns as 
the Pilgrim Fathers'. Yet our winter is 
so often prolonged that the statement of 
snowballs in the oak base hollow in April 
sounds not far-fetched. 

Of hale but not robust constitution, he 
was Fancy's child. He saw magic flori- 
ation in the frostings on the pane ; heard 
the nymphs sing about the spring ; and 
soon hummed spontaneous rhymes be- 
tween the plow-handles. To him " writ- 
ing and reading came b}^ nature," for the 
inclination was irresistible to those in 
charge of his nurture mental after the 
physical : he seemed '' one possessed." 
His sensible senior, looking around on 
the scarcely broken wilderness — which 
only a prophet could have -kav^ foreseen 



14 preface* , 

as tlie seat of the great florist and seeds 
industry of our day — he said : '^ John 
wants education, does he ? what good 
will that ever do the boy ? " It was not 
given him to see that in this life, or the 
good the boy gave. 

On the other hand, with feminine 
desire for amelioration, the fond mother 
held to a premonition, and, long after, 
while urging the young man verifying 
the promise, to be a church-goer, implored 
him to ''go on writing poetr}-." Excep- 
tional matron, for no one in that intellec- 
tual earth could reckon on a pittance for 
the unfortunate wielder of the pen — out 
of trade books. Artists, players and 
poets — rogues, in fact as in legal style. 

The student had to console himself for 
the blue lookout by '' the jingle without 



preface* 15 

the metal '^ — the music of the poetry 
obtainable a hundred miles from a library. 
Scott, Byron — whose advent drove the 
first off the course as he acknowledged 
his was but a shuffling nag to the indu- 
bitably racing barb ; Shakespeare, that 
universal invader who went round the 
globe like his Ariel; Homer, by the 
medium of Pope ; Milton, in '* Paradise 
Lost"; Virgil, b}^ the interlinear trans- 
lation which taught some Latin ; Schiller, 
Goethe and La Fontaine, by translations. 
It was not yet that he acquired French 
and German, those two crutches which 
enable the Asmodeus to pry up strange 
roofs. 

But the illustrative scraps, in Blair's 
*^ Rhetoric," gratified and instructed him 
in the divers measures as well as subjects. 



16 preface* 

Then dropped in gradually, immature 
sprays of Tennyson, Keats, Browning, 
" too luxurious " for the bucolic tyro. 
Yet the florid Moore, by his precursor of 
Omar, in '^ Lalla Rookh," so infiltrated 
him with melody that subsequently he 
could lecture on that arabesque of Orient- 
alism. But the School Speakers — ab- 
sorbing all good things, in the absence of 
copyright stricture — made him believe 
that poetry, to be diffused, should be 
speakable before readable. 

This belief, never quitting him, renders 
his rhymes sonorous and fluent, to be 
uttered to a half-circle of the bewitched 
in the open. Try it ! 

Dwell on the local points and color. 
For the Middle States and New England 
are so changed and travestied by the 



preface* 17 

foreigners^ invasion that an old settler 
can with difficulty recognize natural fea- 
tures. As for the ones newly man-made, 
they are saddening and perplexing. The 
Italians and Portuguese have flaunted 
high colors ; the French-Canadians old 
melodies, and even the Asiatics have 
festival days. The aspect in the first 
half of the last century offered no hint 
or sign of what was piercing the frigid 
crust : a spontaneous, indigenous poesy, 
true, brilliant in the void, relishable on 
the barrens, like that red manna liberally 
spreading the Polar snows. The novelty 
and total unexpectedness increased the 
zest with which it was soon greeted. 
Such novelty had been wanted, though 
not groped for, by any inherent thirst. 
Observers like Channing, saw nothing 



18 ^ttfatt. 

but the prosaic in '^ the cold climate, the 
flat scenery, and the wretched soil,'^ strug- 
gling back to those from the Bay to " the 
lofty lands producing little men." In- 
deed, stern, obdurate realities were the 
fences, wanting mending, around the un- 
grateful lots, no walled-in gardens for the 
Muses pampered in the Olden World. 

In Colonial days, no wild music but 
the Indian drum resounded, no song but 
his death-song. In Revolutionary ones, 
the hand on the grindstone " edging steel,' ^ 
as laments Freneau — who chanted under 
fire, for all that, — had no rest to scribble. 
Washington had to cheer his aids by sing- 
ing such old English drolleries as " the 
Derbyshire Ram." 

But, on Peace's doves cooing, our 
** Farmer's Boy " trimmed his oaten flute 



preface* 19 

or cornstalk fiddle, and an impulse to 
soften down hoar austerity set in. Ears 
whipped by the spring blasts, listened for 
other comfort than in the literary para- 
graphs in the Farmer* s Almariack. Boys 4 
aching with the drudgery of chores, 
harked '* to the call to paths unknown,'^ 
and flouted the dogma that the world was 
but a greater country, as the State was an 
enlarged farm. 

Toilers and tillers yielded to the grow- 
ing craving for melody other than the 
lean, limited notes of our larks, robins, 
thrushes — feeble mockeries of the Eng- 
lish warblers so named ; as fowlers once 
hunted for the phoenix, our budding 
rhymers sorely longed to hear the night- 
ingale, the poets' bird by pre-eminence, to 
die without reveling on which seemed a 



20 preface* 

terrible sliame and is an irremediable 
loss. 

Think of tbe lugubrious hanked-in 
Helicon, where Dr. Watts sat as Apollo ! 
Luckily, the insinuative peddler came to 
the rescue of the doleful. This uncon- 
scious and unconscionable messenger of 
Euterpe — (language of the period) — con- 
tended stoutly with the Psalmist. He 
brought the petty song-sheets preserving 
folk-ballads and blunt pleasantries on 
apposite events not too old out of town. 
" The Poets' Corner " began to mend 
— the classic pieces gave way to native 
lays in lively measures. Dreariness was 
quenched ; cheeriness kindled. The barn 
door was thrown down for the ball-room 
floor, for " the Boatman's Dance," " Jim 
Crow's ^ Jump Jess So, ' " or the " Cana- 



preface* 2 1 

dian Canoe Song.'^ The county organ^s 
Editor's box was lightly approached and 
the rough contribution deposited hope- 
fully, and the new hand departed with a 
heart elate. In demolishing a benumb- 
ing, clogging, outworn past, as the Brit- 
ish general said of the Homespuns' sires 
driving out the redcoats, " they very well 
knew what they were about." 

Seekers for recreation, the few but ear- 
nest enliveners regenerated a lackadaisical 
country, where fairies dared not trip in 
the *^ rings," which came nevertheless ; 
where to play Solitaire was to gamble 
with Old Hairy, and to whistle a jig was 
tantamount to stepping it. 

The songs displacing the Psalter, more 
energetic than elevating, out-ranted the 
Refined " Spouter's Companion," with 



22 preface. 

its orthodox, ^' Marius at Carthage/^ 
*^ Warren Hastings Denounced," and 
" The Sentinel of Pompeii." The " pieces 
for speaking " rose and fell thick as the 
*' snowing " of the pine, brightening up 
the tiresome, somber, brown and gray. 
The dogged plowman at last was shown 
the beauty in the shorn daisy and felt an 
unwonted tenderness, to his ingenuous 
surprise. The country of the Puritans 
was fascinatingly transfigured, like the 
scene Tom Moore expected to see here. 
The cold, raw bone had a delectable 
marrow. 

We say, recitals : despite the admira- 
ble free school system — imitated all the 
world over since — rnany were still unable 
to read " book-English " fluently. They 
had to be read to. Our continuator of 



the Last Minstrel of Europe, the unaf- 
fected and enthusiastic Carey, Dibdin 
and Bayley in one, engrossed the stage 
— called, un theatrically, platform — of the 
lecture-room, the Athenaeum and the 
public hall. 

What racking self-sacrifice, labor in- 
cessant for others, as were the material 
culture and culling; the back-breaking 
picking up of the apples, shaken down at 
neck-risk ; packed for the London mart ; 
our skating-ponds, stripped of ice to cool 
Brummell's champagne ; our wintry days 
deprived of earned rest to peg plantation 
brogans ; game for the Boston or city 
poulterers ; idle pastime grudged. What 
paucity of recreation, too ! The best was 
at the large shed dignified as the Assembly 
Room. The recitationist, with the ster- 



24 ^vtfact. 

eotyped ^^ Warren's Address," '' Clinton 
on Opening the Canal/' ^^ Rebecca relat- 
ing the Attack on the Castle " and that 
tiresome Boy — who stood on the Burn- 
ing Deck, climbed up under the Natural 
Bridge or Looked Aloft in the gallant 
cross-trees. Trowbridge yearned to intro- 
duce a novelty — to serve up other dishes 
than the permanent ^' English quail " ; 
the representative American aspired to 
the native but unknown. 

At thirteen, he was penning his vocif- 
erations to the scarecrows or confidences 
to the sap-kettle swinging from the pierced 
maple. 

As habitual in the young, the highest 
peak was aimed at before the base hills 
were surmounted : our novice essayed an 
ode on " the Tomb of Napoleon." The 



preface. 25 

exile of St Helena had been brought back 
in his coffin to repose " among the French 
people he loved so well," a few years be- 
fore. This successful upstart was the 
ambitious American's ideal. Instead of 
floating him, the ponderous eagle bore 
down the lyrist ; he acknowledges that — 
in time, he perceived it was bosh. That 
is his own word ; and thereby hangs a 
tale ; bosh is Dutch for bad butter, and at 
that time our Goshen butter commanded 
the highest price in the European market. 
But our Milton was not born to remain 
mute and inglorious ; a good-natured 
friend carried the script to the near- 
est newspaper office : '' Hark from the 
Tomb " Napoleon's revived fame, and it 
resounded in organs really pleased to 
copy. A Chicago weekly made much of 



26 preface. 

the infant prodigy — the appreciated Chat- 
terton, of the Excelsior State. Chicago 
was not then the Queen City of the 
West ; there would have been a higher 
brand in the Louisville Cottrier or the 
New Orleans Picayune^ adopting the 
bantling — but enough is as good as a 
feast — a little tap sends the new ship 
down the ways. The youth was assured 
that he had his foot on the Ladder and 
had but to mount. The bubble must 
have had some consistency with its iri- 
descence to survive the transference. It 
might go farther. His pipe should blow 
others more alluring and more lasting. 
There was welcome to native talent. His 
lyre, girded with bay, would '' lay down 
by his side," and not the proverbial *^ cup 
of cold poison " for the misunderstood. 



preface. 27 

Like so many of his sordid age, lie was 
to take up the Passionate Pilgrim's staff 
and begin the assent of that hill, where a 
Song-bird calls on the summit but the 
way is strewn with poets petrified when 
disheartened or listening to the voice of 
common sense bidding them to get back 
to the shovel and the hoe. To him, the 
beautiful was the needful ; but the com- 
mon order accepted the gold in the brick, 
and charily owned to the improvement by 
its being minted as an exquisite coin or 
elaborated intc^ a brilliant jewel. 

Genuine merit does not so much doubt 
the opinions of friends and dearer critics 
as question the weight of those rulings. 
That is why genius boldly tempts the 
*' Lion's Mouth," — Franklin, at the print- 
ing office, believes in his article when it 



28 preface* 

is unwittingly placed on his case before 
him to be set up in type. Our adven- 
turer awaited an opportunity to test in 
the crucible held by an unfeeling hand. 
Besides, one is not born an American 
without resenting the antiquated delusion 
that there is not a price for everything, 
in literature. 

Clapping of hands or slaps on the back 
in the circle of mates and the hum of de- 
light and pride around the parlor table 
are the proverbial piper's pay — nothing 
convertible into goods. Editorial thanks 
are numbered with this same willow-leaf 
currency. Shocking as was the spirit of 
tontines and state- lotteries, a phase sur- 
vived in the mode of " vailing,'' that is, 
rewarding the men who, in the guise of 
the newsboys we see by legion, waited all 



preface* 29 

the year for the end which they had a 
traditional authority to claim a varying 
stipend. On presenting a New Year's 
Address, the subscribers returned a pres- 
ent. This address gradually assumed a 
set form: it was a broadside, in rhyme, 
conveying thanksgiving, indulging in a 
forecast political, local, and domestic ; 
commonly the newspaper editor wrote it 
and many a notable looks back to these 
annual feats — which have their value in 
curio-collections — without any regret save 
that they have not done so much better in 
the declining years. 

The county journal editor was unable 
or disinclined to trot out his " racker " ; 
he had no assistant ; and perchance he 
wished to harrow the complacency of his 
subscribers. He proposed to have the 



30 ^teface^ 

address composed among them ; lie offered 
a prize in the shape of a splendidly bound 
volume, then announced, to the author 
of the annunciatory page found pre-emi- 
nently fit. At the promise of Griswold's 
*^ Poets of America," one pair of eyes was 
distended to '' popping." It was John T. 
Trowbridge's, for this volume promised 
to comprise all his desires. 

The divine inflation seems to have 
confined itself to the one bard ; the 
competition was narrow ; the race was 
*' Eclipse first — and the rest nowhere." 
But after the appointment as herald of 
the New Year, the winner met vexa- 
tion ; the laurels withered ; in plain, it 
left not a leaf behind. The editor hemmed 
and ha'd ; the prize book did not come on 
from the town. To make a brief story of 



I^reface. 31 

it, the curmudgeon compromised for the 
costly token by handing over a dollar or 
so. Griswold, appealed to, could not have 
done more scurvily. But the First Dol- 
lar earned by one's self ! The Mint coins 
such only once ! Phillips' '' Splendid 
Shilling," then famed among poetasters, 
paled its sheen. 

But you will not hastily and ignorantly 
conclude that this illusion turned the 
traveller on his way? alas, the mirage of 
twenty is often the vision of the Promised 
Land reached at eighty. 

Trowbridge was at manhood's gate. 
On him and brother, by the father's death, 
was placed the maintenance of the home- 
stead and their mother, who was to be 
blessed with nearly five-score. Means' of 
communication were strengthening if not 



32 preface* 

multiplying ; farming was remunerative 
— given indefatigable temper and unalter- 
able healtH. But John was averse to per- 
petuating the monotonous and arduous 
work. The weakness of sight, perhaps 
not counteracted by so much study, neces- 
sitated such a brave step as Dana took 
and to which the world owes the next 
book to " Crusoe " as a veritable seaman's 
revelation. Trowbridge might have been 
the lustier, and America again congratu- 
lated on a still realistic but more poetical 
'' Before the Mast.'' 

However, he hesitated like the ass of 
the scholiast between the two livelihoods 
presented by the country midway in the 
last century: to peddle or to canvass. 
Deciding on the latter as more genteel, he 
commenced beating up the neighbors to 



preface* 3S 

dispose them to purchase one knows not 
what '' Life of Washington ^^ by instal- 
ments. But as an urchin going to the 
dentist^s with an aching tooth, has the 
pang fly on the doorstep, he flinched at 
the first possible client's and turned home^ 
determined never to be a " solicitor." 

To be a well incurs irrigation ; his edu- 
cation, hap-hazard as it was, created him 
a wizard ; he must, therefore, become a 
sower broadcast of the wisdom : Teach 
school. We have outstepped Europe ; 
there, the boy must be a soldier or a 
churchman; here, he teaches "the young 
idea how to shoot ink or lead.'^ 

The schoolmaster, in the Thirteen 
States, occupied the exalted post of the 
priest in the Middle Ages. Dickens 
found that every man not dubbed Colonel, 



34 ^ttfatt. 

Judge or Doctor, was a Professor. To be 
a Professor was superior to Poet. 

John trimmed his quill for staid lines 
and, leaving the farm to his senior, went 
over to Lockport, a creation of the Canal, 
coeval with his growth, to preside over 
the district school, '^ classical," if you 
please, of thirty souls. Some of the souls 
wevQ in heads higher than his own. You 
will find details of this trial in ^' The Lit- 
tle Master." 

On what had he read up to inform the 
iornorant ? Mixed odds and ends to fur- 
nish what Jeremy Taylor calls the scaf- 
folding for a building. Rollin and Jose- 
phus certainly counterpoised ^' The Pirate 
of the Gulf " and '' the Pirate's Own Book," 
confessedly " thought good ! " He had 
also digested more useful knowledge than 



preface* 35 

" the Britisli Poets ^' supplied. Happily, 
lie had French, from a Canadian, provin- 
cial but close enough for the rustics, and 
was reading German. Fortunately the 
concurrent new school in France, Hugo, 
Dumas and their imitators, dosed their 
romances with history ; more than one 
of their disciples can give assurance 
that the school examiner would condemn 
the pupil fortified with this palatable 
mixture. 

But the occupation was not remuner- 
ative, while irksome ; like Goldsmith, he 
deserted the village ; instead of a flute he 
meant to whistle his way through the 
world. We had no '^ lazy Scheldt," but 
mau}^ tumbling rivers spun the mill 
wheels and in the manufacturers' families 
light literature was in request. 



36 l^reface* 

Visitors from the Old Country mar- 
velled at the reading habit, if frivolous, 
done by the Americans, particularly the 
women. Indeed, without the mandarins 
knowing of the extent though deploring 
it, the manufacture was immense in Bos- 
ton and New York, of reading matter. 
The bulk came from England, but not 
from choice of taste ; simply that gave 
the printer reprint cop}^, an advantage 
over manuscript, though in a (school-) 
masterly hand. 

John T., arriving in the Empire City, 
found it an empirical one as regards 
aesthetics. Nobody asked questions 
about the author — but would the eman- 
ation sell ? If the book would not go 
into the twenty-five or fifty cent form, it 
was chopped to fit. If an author obtained 



preface* 37 

a following, all the novels in his style 
were ascribed to him. Hence, James, 
(G. P. R.) and Bulwer-Lytton seem the 
only English romancists, as Dumas and 
Sue the only foreign ones. 

Our adventurer had a guiding star of 
value. Or say it was Minerva's bird ; it 
found an ark. This ark was the office of 
the ^^ Su7iday Times and NoaJi^s AfesseU' 
gcry It was in the Publisher-Printers^ 
quarter, Ann and 'Nassau street corner 
its nucleus. This namesake and descen- 
dant of the first navigator, ]Mordecai ]\I. 
Noah, was a celebrit}^ ; a Jew who had 
served the country as consul, and worked 
worthily for our realm of letters while 
never dropping the prelude to what has 
become the Zionist Movement. He was 
a rotund, genial gentleman, the reverse 



38 preface* 

of Dr. Johnson in seeing tlie necessity of 
even the humblest writer to live. 

He examined the Japhet in search of a 
father for his witlings. The eyes in the 
upper head bespoke intelligence ; the 
nose, acuteness ; the large mouth, in- 
clined to droop the lower lip like his own, 
meant humor; the whole, while simple 
and not paled by the city air, favorably 
moved, and made him more kindly than 
usual, if that could be. But poetry was 
lead ; essays were brass ; short stories 
were silver — if not gold. Had he a story ? 
The new-comer, like all in the first flight, 
had a feather loose in his wing. It was 
not so very short, too long for a news- 
paper, unless a serial ; or he would 
have brought it instead of the sheaf of 
verses. 



preface* 39 

Mr. Noah continued the lesson on what 
his Times required, and concluded a 
charming interview — from which modern 
editors may take the cue — with the 
business-like advice: 

"Revise your novel; take it to Wil- 
liams Brothers, publishers at the corner 
yonder, of the Morning Star^ Yankeey 
and I know not what. They devour copy 
like the Fiery Furnace ; only, the deserv- 
ing children are left, shining with glory, 
if not with the shekels. Leave the 
Manuscript for ^ Harry ' Williams, that 
is, the junior, Henr}^ L. — with mention 
of my name. We are friends." 

The Williams Brothers had a branch 
of origin in Boston, but to reprint " no 
end of " English books, they had a floor- 
room of presses running. If Hoe had 



40 preface. 

built his colossal machines at that day 
and there were paper enough, it would 
have been the ^' United States Book Trust '^ 
foredone. The applicant left his story, 
■ somewhat awed by his tilting at veteran 
j ousters of London and the European 
Continent. 

Finally, he entered upon Prof. "Harry'* 
Williams' affable presence just as that 
decider of literary fame and fortune was 
unrolling the work sent on "approbation. " 
This fortuity was auspicious, no doubt. 
Both smiled at the coincidence. Instead 
of conversing, they chatted. Williams 
was not only a master printer but deep in 
current letters ; he had crossed to Eng- 
land and had the skimming of the 
" advance sheets." He agreed with Noah 
that there was no sale for poems. For 



general fiction the house had the first 
look at foreign productions, saying 
nothing of bonds with London printing- 
houses by which their reproductions of 
notable Paris and Brussels successes 
would come over in the stereotype plates 
ready to lay on the presses ! What 
chance had native abilities, then ? 

" Great — provided the subject is apt. 
Nearly all of our profitable novels home- 
brewed, are hits on the nail : our alert 
public do not have time to have allusions, 
however pertinent, lucidated. As the 
Cockney was understood at home when 
he said of our winters, that more snow 
fell here than would fill St. James^ Park 
— about as big as the Hoboken Elysian 
Fields, by the way ! — so our many readers 
tell the time by the City Hall Clock out 



42 preface* 

there and reckon all height by Trinity 
steeple.'^ 

In spite of this exordium, he, still 
revolving the roll, judged offhand, that it 
would suit. This was cavalier, for the 
petitioner did not know that the publisher 
had the knack of pondering writings. 
Years after, the sum of his experience 
was that " a book sells because it sells," 
but thejlair^ the tact, the plunk-plunk of 
the sound ripe melon is perceptible 
instantly to the predestined expert. 

It was the settling hour, for plainly, 
the publisher did not want to be dispos- 
sessed of the manuscript of which he had 
" seizing." The commonplace practical 
discussion on brain work suggested an 
amercement on his conjecture. The 
Johnny Raw stammered his expectation 



preface. 43 

that something like a hundred dollars 
might bring them into more accord. 

The dictator smiled conciliatingly — 
being still youngish himself and a little 
of an author, and replied : 

" We are not in the habit of paying our 
authors so highl}^ for their first works — " 
(Or, often so, for their later ones ? eh ?) 

He tendered twenty-five dollars for the 
four or five quires in his hand. Nomi- 
nally it was precisely the sum for which 
*' Paradise Lost " was exchanged ! At 
this moment, over the ocean, Dumas and 
Sue were getting ten cents a word ! ac- 
counted Abomination, but read every- 
where ! 

Spite of the " come-down,'^ the beginner 
accepted, as in fishing he had strung on 
the first catch, though a minnow, to en- 



44 preface* 

courage the others to pile on. Besides, 
he was soon to learn that payment was 
beggarly among the purveyors of Paper- 
covered novels ; and for translations even 
less. Foreign cheap labor counted there 
— New York swarmed with political ref- 
ugees and black sheep of almost royal 
flocks. That was not all the detriment, 
the publishers were not sure ; they failed 
in their stinted pledges ; they paid in 
notes warranting excessive discount ; they 
" went to Texas " ; the receivers in bank- 
ruptcy favored the printers, binders, and 
stationers, and struck off the author's 
debt — of honor; as if but for his scroll, 
the workmen would have had any work 
to go upon ! 

Necessarily, though thus fully occupied, 
and yet doing newspaper items in made 



preface* 45 

intervals, tHe straggler had to have re- 
course to petty handicrafts, adopting them 
with the multifarious readiness of the 
American-born. Another woe arose from 
the careless methods of the popular pub. 
lishers ; to save the paltry copyright fee 
they failed to register, and authors, robbed 
by them, could not retrieve in time by re- 
newing their right. The premium was 
on the author dying young ! 

The magazine editors were a shade 
blacker. One, highly respectable, whose 
crocodile wept that Poe should have been 
ill rewarded, told our subject on his meek 
demand for the consideration for a printed 
article, that the honor should be enough. 

Chafing at the injustice, the adept 
sought a new and more fertile field. 

In the authors' restaurants, Windust's, 



46 preface. 

(acute misnomer!) Florence's, Brown's 
Chophouse or the Pewter Mug, they were 
wont to chant a parody on MacKay : 

" Tell me, ye winged winds that round me play: 
Is there a spot where authors get their pay ? '* 

" From the North cometh the Light.'* 
He looked towards Boston. The Will- 
iams Brothers could have told him that 
they knew the Trimontaine City from 
when they set up types in its offices, and 
that all but the purblind saw that with 
the transportation lines concentrating on 
the Hudson's mouth, the days when Mass- 
achusetts Ba}^ was the only haven for 
European vessels, was over. Their pre- 
science was fifty years too soon, but it 
was correct. 

Manhattan was the hunting-ground of 



preface* 47 

the free-lances from all the world over ; 
what a conglomerate band ; Ingraham, 
Judson, Herbert, Snelling, Fayette, Rob- 
inson, Duganne, Wallace ; they were 
pilasters if not pillars ; they sustained 
the temple of Universal Education. They 
starved, pouring out the honey for the 
banqueted multitude. 

But Boston was biased by the Concord 
Clique. There would be no eluding this 
octopus had not the arms been diverse 
and individual : they did not conflict. 
They rated themselves supernal. One, 
Alcott, said to Emerson, another : '' You 
are always talking of Plato or Pythagoras 
or Mahomet ! — why don't you say a word 
of ME?" By happy chance, the young 
man who had eschewed the "blood-and- 
thunder " pirates of Gotham, fell not to 



48 preface. 

the sophistry of the Solon s. Not " red/' 
he would not be blue though a little drab, 
after the manner of the '' Quaker poet.'^ 
For Whittier was straightforward and 
plainspoken like himself, and loved coun- 
try life in the same unaffected way. The 
Dons continued to drawl out the plati- 
tudes, more or less beguilingly, while the 
intruder devoted himself to please the un- 
tutored. He felt pity for those who found 
no assuagement but in the cascade leap- 
ing over their heads or in the gutter-flow. 
He aimed to supply some beverage at about 
heart's level. 

Hence, the vital poems for general 
audiences, and the stories that formed 
our later generation and continue the 
brave work. The personages spoke no 
set dialect — where is there such in our 



preface. 49 

confines ? but each had idiosyncrasies 
as we know others possess while not 
admitting the foible in ourselves. The 
articles have a purpose, a keel that stead- 
ies them, and conduces to the forward 
course. They were flowers from our soil : 
not imported ones on which glistered the 
serpent's slime, or beneath which crawled 
a venomous creature. No highwayman^ 
and as Pat would say, they were not gen- 
tlemanly ! no morals of Mayfair. The 
heroes were not unvaryingl}'' artists or 
authors — for the mass still held the old 
and trite tenet that it was a higher duty 
to pay debts than to write novels or paint 
pictures. We nodded to the Yankees 
and other acquaintances who were not 
Sam Slicks any more than they were 
Hosea Bigelows. Between their parts, 



50 preface* 

the author did not air the hieratic diction 
where a mare's nest was equine nidifica- 
tion (fact ! ) and the " verecund" writer a 
modest one. The readers were addressed 
as thoughtful, not as unthinking and 
lyanting to be coaxed out. 

The New York " freshman '' held his 
own among the college graduates ; the me- 
thodical publishers discerned his worth ; 
they joined in the praise of the self- 
lauded crew, but they employed him. 
The ^' hack " was become a Flying Chil- 
ders, Theodore Parker, from his pulpit^ 
spoke pointedly of *' the exemplary coun- 
try-bred youth who aspires to something 
better than working on a farm at twelve 
dollars a-month." The exodus to the 
city was not unheeded in the last half- 
century. 



preface* 5 1 

His resolution to succeed was like the 
wedge with an energetic maul behind it- 
Did he but get a couplet inserted in a 
" close corporation " magazine, it opened 
the passage for a sonnet or canto. Where 
the short story entered, it forwarded a 
serial running for months. His "Jack 
Hazard " stuck to a periodical like a 
tug to a steamer for years even after the 
publication was rebuilt and relaunched. 

It was the happy medium between the 
wild-fire of the New York Bohemians and 
the cold-drawn oil of the Brook Farm 
Communit}^ 

Perseverance as of his own heroes ob~ 
tained a post — the assistant was soon 
manager. He was to be conductor of an. 
influential organ. Already he outstripped 
Hawthorne's three hundred a-year. 



52 preface* 

Under various pseudonyms, ^^ Paul 
Creyton," " Augustus Holmes " (the co- 
incidence with " Augusta Holmes " is 
remarkable) *' Jackwood," '' Harvey Wild- 
er," one may collect some strays under 
one head — the miscellaneous transcriber 
of events developed science, arts, and man- 
ufactures, intruding in mills, foundries, 
workshops, to represent the secret doings 
fresh to the uninitiated. Nothing curious 
escaped him : remarked the odd jingle of 
"' The Charcoal Man." This lost street- 
cry tells of the day before the kerosene- 
can helped to light fires and they were 
^* built " of paper or shavings, light wood, 
charcoal, or hard wood, and lastly the coal. 
Impossible to learn this risible piece 
without being tempted to recite it, and it 
convulses any gathering, with its domes- 



preface* 5a 

tic images and the quaint melody in 
*' Charco' ! cliarco' ! " Such gives the 
only desirable popularity — that following- 
you, not rising, but dying out before. 
The like of gems of this quality appears 
in the principal magazines, betokening 
his fixed devotion to fine art at the same 
time as his longer works in prose testify 
to intense pressure to affirm his views. 
The fastidious Atla7itic^ '' The Great 
Khan " of our realm of letters, besought 
poems from his white-heat forge. 

Type of the indefatigable American^ 
with all this production in so many chan- 
nels, he found time to go more than once 
to Europe ; even then, he would not relax 
but in correspondence and noting for 
future efforts, let no advantage go by. . 

The lyrist may dwell in a bomb-proof 



54 IPrcfacc* 

from politics ; but from the fundamental 
arguments never. It was peace. Yet the 
cat's-paws that foreran the tempest — the 
Black Squall of the Anti-slavery Agita- 
ta tion — began to ruffle the serenity. As- 
sistant-editor of a Boston daily, a fugitive 
.slave case constrained him to dash off an 
article only too fervent with the natural 
impulses engendered by freedom in a free 
man. The jet started a broad flame. 
The editor hastened back to find his office 
threatened bv a mob and his aid in a mar- 
A^el at the to-do his lines had raised. He 
was of the large body that forswore the 
principles of old and were willing for a 
parting of the ways. But Trowbridge 
was for the Union — right or wrong ! He 
liad friends among the Abolitionists but 
not their narrow views. He tackled the 



unsettled problem of miscegenation, an- 
tedating *' The Octoroon " witli a less rude 
ardor. As drama and story, '^ Neighbor 
Jackwood " holds a place in the special 
papers of the outbreak of the *' Crisis." 

The war breaking out, the magnet was 
located in the debatable ground between 
the armies. His stories were to become 
historical. Each was a link in a chain 
which suffered no shortening. In " Cud- 
jo's Cave," the reader dwelt with the 
emancipated bondman ; in sequels, with 
the soldiers ; in ^' Coupon Bonds " with 
the financiers who bore the brain-heaviest 
burden in our agony. Fair play makes: 
these vital records read as well by the 
Suwanee as the Merrimac. 

Trowbridge's ^' Drummer-boy " rele- 
gated to the shade the spectral one sup- 



56 ^tdatt. 

posed to haunt the village rim and recal 
the Minute-men's summons in the Revolu- 
tion. As patriotic as ^* Waverley/' like 
that, the War . stories, forestalling that 
reconciliation amazing to the unregener- 
ated world, constrained the Southerner to 
clasp hands with the Northerner as soon 
as the guns were stacked. Honor, brav- 
ery, faith, constancy — were common to 
hoth parties ; — the motive in his charac- 
ters was as the gold thread that traverses 
a motley web, after the fabric fades and 
falls apart, the metal remains good as ever. 
He foresaw that with the unparalleled 
constitution of the newest amalgam of the 
Anglo-Saxon with heaven knows what 
elements, our Alexander victorious would 
fraternize with conquered Darius and the 
seam be cemented by both hands uncleav- 



^ttfatt. 57 

ably. The confidence that a just cause 
must triumph is so firmly expressed that 
to doubt is guilt ; the hand remained ten- 
der spite of the callousing musket-stock. 
In Trowbridge's *' secession " stories you 
own that 

" The life may be true 

And hearts beat the same under Gray coats or Blue. 

These important deviations did not keep 
him from his predestined track, endeared 
b}^ the most pleasant felicitations ; even 
his one audience clamored for more 
*' pieces to speak." On top of that, the 
rising sea in England, of w^hich Howitt 
the Quaker, Knight, Chambers, all the 
^ benevolent vulgarizers, were the beacon- 
buoys by their organs, delightedly circu- 
lated the Trowbridge verses. The Penny 



58 preface. 

Magazines were wound np in the wild 
American vine and the consumers ex- 
ulted in the fruit — for high out of reach 
to them were the hothouse grapes. The 
cities might prefer the lucubrations of the 
theosophical, transcendental, academical, 
but these posies were dewy-fresh, bright 
in self-tints, as pluckings off the wayside 
or in rarely invaded nooks. Even when 
bereft of the stamp, a welcome " Trow- 
bridge," the smack of pungency, like 
pennyro3^al, classed one with the others 
for the social gatherings. Still it is flat- 
tering to the palate to identify an un- 
named delicacy, and the reader finally 
foils the lingering scorn of the author 
and the prejudice that brain-work should 
remain gentlemanly, that is, gratuitous ! 
It is said that the cut of the chisel reveals 



preface, 59 

the arch-sculptor ; the '' Trowbridge " 
selections began to be set apart. Each 
had its individuality as a *' sport," but all 
pointed back to the main stem : truth, 
sense, electrifying fire, accumulative force 
as you reiterated them, suggestions, like 
the comprehensive sermon, that ^' hit a 
man somewhere to do him good." The 
pastoral recognized features with glee as 
the town-pump, hitching-post or liberty- 
pole, for such landmarks once were. 

A fellow-feeling told us plump that this 
youngster who had lifted himself out of 
the Slough of Despond, was not happy 
until he pulled out the rest of the human 
chain. 

Granted that our idol'd fame is not 
linked with that of the master of the 
Great Mutual Admiration Society, called 



60 preface* 



u 



the New England School," where all the 
scholars were principals ! but while those 
professors were mummies, the Byrons, 
Poes and Burnses are vital voices. We 
had enough of the formulated exercises 
— we gladly embraced what lines could be 
talked out, mouth to ear, to the multitude. 
We lads could retain and repeat t/iem 
in the woodshed, in the cornfield, by the 
swimming-pool side. Well, perhaps it is 
as the Old Grand-Army man said of Lin- 
coln and Washington — he preferred the 
former, as he had *' grown up with him." 
It is said that Americans welcomed 
poetry, as nothing of the sort alleviated 
their tedious days' surroundings. But 
there is a good deal of poetry as well as 
" human nature in man " ; the Brothers 
Grimm affirm that poetry precedes prose ; 



preface* 6X 

that common folks lisp in numbers. At 
any rate, they are not deaf to the charmer, 
sooner if he does not charm too learn- 
edly. 

No fashionable " fad " has the run of 
recitations — and if it has died out amid 
culture, it thrives in the West, where, in 
fact, the Down-easters are homed. And 
the force is not limited by the sea : in the 
English penny readings Trowbridge's 
selections, are acclaimed from Dover to 
Glasgow. " Darius Green " is a friend 
to our youthful cousins. They were also 
fagged to death with Elizabethan, Plutar- 
chian and heaven knows what " — alistic " 
classics. If none there would answer as 
to reading an American book^ the unanim- 
ity is complete as to Trowbridge pages 
for utterance satisfying the demand for 



62 preface. 

support, encouragement and self-help. 
He does not say old things in the old, old 
way or a new one — but new things in 
their new way. 

The mirror he holds up to mankind 
and nature is one of those chased with a 
delicate design ; reflection comes forth 
confined in that pattern, blended with its 
own harmoniously. The defining im- 
proves the picture. But this governance 
does not impair ; it is not the fine garb 
that deters one's approach — irreproach- 
able remains approachable. His Hamlets 
are not told by the spirits raised to keep 
their distance. 

This unstilted language caught us at 
the breath ; it was our own, only we could 
not ^^ handle " it, as the superior did, freely, 
patly, stirringly. At the hearing it also 



preface* 63 

penetrated the stolid, " solid men," who 
retained seats for the whole lecture season. 
On leaving, the reserved went home soci- 
ably, like the inseparable '' Vagabonds,'* 
by the zigzag lane of fancy — gallantly 
and cheerily, pairing as " Roger and I." 

Adroitly preserving the proportions that 
please so description should not cloud the 
action as smoke obscures a battle, Trow- 
bridge was in the front of our naturalistic 
recorders : he, among the earliest, sowed 
what is now frayed, as a term — atmos- 
phere. When our landscapists exhibited 
in Europe, their mastery was acknowl- 
edged but their forms and tints disputed. 
Impossible for an Englishman, who sees 
all darkly as through a fog, to confess the 
gorgeous hues of the fall in a forest, or 
the sublimity of the White Mountains to 



64: preface* 

wh-icli the Grampians are foot-hills. So 
as the sites have been sterilized by that 
great, merciless vulgarizer, Manufacture, 
none will see, save in these accurate pages, 
the views trampled on by wooden shoes 
and naked exotic feet. But the nonage- 
narians who also sailed matchboxes with a 
feather for sail on the Frogpond of Boston 
Common, tried to outstrip the chipmunk 
over the wide rock wall, stood under the 
Maine pines that make the Scotch ones 
mere whipstocks, and shot a chute on the 
feeders of the Concord, have the past 
loveliness resuscitated. If on leaving the 
playhouse, we bear away the melancholy 
Jacques, and not a leafy branch, we know 
the scene painter was deficient in impres- 
siveness. In Trowbridgeiana, is always 
displayed : — 



preface* 65 

" The art that changes and mends Nature — 
The art itself is nature." — IVmUr^s Tale, 

Is it necessary — is it always satisfac- 
tory to know tHe real existence of the 
poet whose figments become figures in 
our mental world? it is unseldom that 
the man leads a life as romantic as what 
he imagines. Would Grace Darling's 
name sound more mellifluous — would her 
gallant deed show up more illustriously 
if she herself wrote any of the score 
panegyrics upon it ? At the same time, 
one may confess that the reading has an 
additional impression to hear that our 
author, in his recounts of heroism and 
daring-doings could draw from his own 
bosom. At the risk of his life, in the face 
of the shrinking crowd, he plunged for- 
ward over the leathery ice of a treacher- 



66 preface. 

ous pond and rescued a lad in an exposed 
danger-spot. Everything in ratio. Fal- 
coner to His shipwreck, Cervantes in his 
Lepanto, Michel Angelo in the breach of 
Florence walls, Patrick Henry's speech 
courting the dungeon, he who also ven- 
tures his life for a brother puts himself 
on a par with these, in due proportion, 
and his ode may be laid on the same shelf 
as their epics. 

It is only fair and purely in keeping 
with our peculiar dry humor, lifting the 
act into higher relief while apparently 
isolating it, that the life-saver frankly 
adds that while the voice of the lookers-on 
was syllabled : *' I wouldn't have done 
that for ten million dollars ! " as old Uncle 
Joshua flung the cooling drop on the en- 
thusiasm with : '' That boy is our worst 



preface* 67 

melon-tliief and mout as well liave beeia 
drowned ! " 

How does he look, this writer who 
pleases us so by his devices? Ah, yes, 
Shakespeare's playfellows were respond- 
ing to an universal and eternal inquiry 
when they offered '' the counterfeit pre- 
sentment " of their Gentle Will in the 
best portrait available. Our wild- wood 
note singer is the same as he ever was, 
on the downhill as breasting the upward 
slope. Only, as in the dissolving views, 
it is a change of the dark hair to white — 
the flowing beard for the military mus- 
taches and the goatee of the War times. 

The same open face and clear, fearless 
eyes, undiminishable in lustre ; the con- 
tour has the American elongation inas- 
much as the forehead is high. No sage 



6S preface. 

has a more intellectual mold. The beam 
of that kindly glance has always been 
directed forward when not upward. The 
motto of his state : " Excelsior ! Higher ! ^* 
is in repetition there. The mouth is fine 
but liberal ; it is rather Swift and Sterne, 
no just pun ! than Rabelaisian, but one 
thinks of Falstaff when he repented and 
was to live a gentleman. Liquorish ? 
Oh, dear, no ! the temperance in the 
works is ingrown ; 3^et, with that irrepres- 
sible amusement which will surge up, 
there is a mention somewhere, by himself, 
that he was cured of an indisposition by 
the sterling old remedy — hard cider cup. 
The virginal snowy white frame is not 
chilling; on the contrary, it speaks as 
does the wreath slowly disappearing in 
April — of the springtide ever returning. 



Here is a man who made many friends 
not merely by his writings but by his 
companionship ; and yet never was the 
tag like those who formed the Chinese 
jingler, of '' the Brook Farm," to which ( 
allusion has been made ; when touched, 
he tolled out his own note and did not 
chime with the peal. He was a John 
Blunt then, as his frequent frankness in- 
dicates ! Ay, and never lost by it. By 
dint of tacking up memorial tablets all 
over the town, the sojourner is given the 
conviction that it is an abode of celeb- 
rities ; but, ten to one, if you ask the deni- 
zen for a testimonial of Trowbridge's serv- 
ices, this very man would beat his breast 
and gratefully and proudly answer : 

'' I am his work ! his stories — his 
poems made a man of me! " 



70 preface* 

There is no more space — especially as 
this detains the reader from enjoying the 
feast of reason and seasoning here-coming 
— to expatiate, and it is futile, for Trow- 
bridge obeyed the injunction of his friend 
Thoreau : *' Is not the poet bound to 
write his own biography ? " 

It is entitled '' My Own Story '' ; and it 
is not the least entertaining of the hundred 
others. The trend is always upward ; 
the firm step is always of the man seeing 
his goal and taking untoward events as 
*' all in the day's work." This man has 
not all light, but like us, has a shadow. 
But he would not look on that black side. 
You will see that the base literary drudg- 
ery was but the rough getting the hand 
in for finer things ; blow the bellows 
before you hold the iron or swing the 



preface* 71 

sledge ! You will see fortitude in the 
trials in New York, and the transfer to 
Boston, where Dr. Holmes assured just 
such another fledgling that ^'our writers 
are poor as rats.'' It is as well to record 
that the good adviser gave his applicant 
a bit of counsel Trowbridge lacked ; 
instead of squandering his growing rep- 
utation upon several aliases^ he enforced 
*^ Keep to one signature." 

The young student who aims to be a 
leader in letters points out the modern 
and American course diametrically op- 
posed to the old one : " To be reviewed 
favorably, cultivate the reviewers." But 
the reviewers here carry no weight with a 
public which reads no reviews for their 
tastes to be warped or wafted. On the 
other hand, Trowbridge acted on the 



72 preface* 

Cleveland principle : " Perseverance is 
better than /?///." Depend upon it, the 
editor, not the proprietor also, in using 
matter in which he benefits is untrue to 
his employer, and though justice has 
leaden soles, it overtakes in the long run. 
But one can guard against the dishonest ; 
it is stupidity that baffles the most acute. 
Can a reliable conclusion be drawn from 
the Trowbridge career, as shown in his 
progress for the public betterment? It 
is a question each time left to the recip- 
ient to decide and appraise. By the 
multiplicity of employers, this busy bee ^ 
prevented any one controlling his entire 
subsistence and so preserved his moral 
independence. But, as his song asserts 
hopefully, the hand extended with trust 
in fellow man, often meets a helping one. 



preface* 73 

Drawing confidence in his experience, 
and having his inspiring verses by heart, 
the reader of this and the ensuing lines 
may dare the future and expect no less 
honorable and compatible return for 
endurance, application and unremitting 
production. 



As the founder of the Boys' Story, as 
understood in America, where it sprung 
perfect, John T. Trowbridge must be 
cited. ^' Ofer the Water," and in former 
times, authors wrote for those having gone 
through the same educational course; 
they gave their leisure — not their service 
— hours ; their level was above the boyish 
flights ; they soared into the empyrean 
when the air upon earth was good enough 
for the majority. They bore disregard 



74 fSrcface. 

for youth as deep as tlie American youth's 
failing of irreverence for age. They held 
that energy was noble but not that " Idle- 
ness and non-value to the fellow-citizen '^ 
was base. They did not believe that a 
boy's heart may dwell in many a man. 
They expected a perpetual treading in 
the made footsteps, in the grooved and 
graven way of the mule train in the Andes. 
Precisely as the pap's old clothes were 
cut down and made up for the scion, so 
for his reading — grumblingly allowed, 
instead of nothing being too good for him 
— as since — anything was good enough. 
Our author was the first to enlarge on 
the sound reasoning in the ancient 
couplet : 

" Cloth of gold, do not despise, 

When thou art wed with cloth of Fries." 



preface. 75 

Hence his novels became not only en- 
deared to our growiiig'Ups^ but to far-off 
children, being translated into the limits 
of our tongue, mainly the mother-Ger- 
man. These trial-balloons, much imi- 
tated, proved the accomplishment of the 
most difficult exactions in a merciless 
circle : the demure and the decorous. 
The work has to run the gauntlet, not of 
the class aimed at — fickle, unaware of its 
own mind, repulsing the hale for the 
spiced — but the parents, uncle, aunt, par- 
son and school-teacher. None were leni- 
ent, few but fastidious, and so ex;acting. 
The subject usually came through beaten 
out, and lifeless. That book stood out 
unique to be readable at the table where 
all the family gathered — an American 
innovation, papa resigning his old-time 



76 ^ttiatt. 

autocracy — or allowed in the ingle or the 
window-bay instead of the orthodox " Sun- 
day book." Romance blurred and dis- 
torted, and ought to be clad in drab 
holland, metaphorically, as the best room 
furniture actually. 

Solely on this lukewarm sa£-e-iesij the 
victims would have grown up flabby, 
mealy-mouthed hypocrites, but a secret 
counter-agent saved them. On the sly 
were circulated copies of a stuff as in- 
jurious, though at the other extreme : 
^^ Mysteries," '* Wanderers " who left the 
straight path, Italian banditti, German 
goblins, — to combat which Scott was ad- 
mitted, till ^' too much ^ Ivanhoe ' wearied,^* 
But into the lists where the Black Un- 
known Knight reigned, dashed the native 
champions — The Trowbridge Juveniles^ 



preface. 77 

The qualities were manifest to the elders, 
and they could not impeach the fun that 
made their set mouths relax, and the 
natural points tickle them; they par- 
doned mischief which was due to high 
spirits and was always condoned for by 
proper conduct. Odd that when men 
were ardent and stubborn for free speech 
and free press, vivacity and gaiety were 
frowned upon for boys, and the women 
throttled all boisterousness with their 
pudding-bag strings. Versatility was the 
terror of the humdrum and only dismal 
mottoes were worked on the monotonous 
samplers. To be '^ oblivious of the obvi- 
ous " was happiness. 

The Trowbridge budget was a veritable 
"Wonderful Sack" to capture the rustic, 
who found in it that nature was fluid and 



78 preface* 

not fixed. Prejudices, enjoined inertia, 
subservience, all vanished at the sound 
of this voice vaulting the chairs of the 
reserved few to reach the plebeian back 
seats, and the " standees." The satirists, 
" America (that is, a hundred miles 
around the Hub\ sensual and avaricious," 
quailed at the declaration of a new inde- 
pendence, that capacity found the oppor- 
tunity — that a man did shape his fortune 
however rough-hewn by others. Trow- 
bridge only broadened this theme in his 
many stories for progressive youth. 

As Bay State bred and Boston borri, 
the writer contests the '' sensual " but 
the " avaricious " must stand. An age an- 
terior to the quip at '' the Mighty Dollar," 
the rough bawler of the Lament of Cap- 
tain Kidd, pointedly begged the attention 



^reface^ 79 

of the Cape Cod and Martha^s Vineyard 
skippers to the moral : " Don^t for the 
sake of gold, lose your soul ! " 

It is something gained for the nation 
where the Golden Rule still is obeyed 
above the rule of gold. Buoys on the tide 
of literature, these works, in any form, 
trace the right channel ; there is haven at 
the end if you make for it. You learn 
that it is better to row than drift, though 
toilsome ; better to sail than row, as you 
utilize nature ; but far ahead of all, to fit 
3^ourself to steer. For if this modern 
Sparta has a mission, it is to furnish the 
guides, directors, supervisors for other 
races to retrieve the Garden of Eden. 

The ballads that you read annexed, 
did not command the critics' notice but, 
copied numerously, the remote news-letter 



so ^ufatt. 

furthered their admirers^ desire. The 
ground was natural if not *^ naturalistic.'* 

The tolerated fiction, ^' company '* 
novels jarring with chivalric — dilated on 
lack-lustre life in stately halls, with the 
only comedy that of passages below-stairs, 
of " Little Marchionesses " and Jeames de 
la Pinches. 

So the delineations of home doings, 
New England scenery, habitual acquaint- 
ances — these startled the readers of bom- 
bast-fustian. They had glimpses of the 
sort, sketches, but uprose figures defined 
as by the old Dutch masters, right to a 
shoestring, every hue bright and shim- 
mering. The cultured flavor might be 
absent, but how inimitable and enjoyable 
the tang of the butternut, the lush frost- 
cured barberry, the savor of the Roxbury 



russet ! Tears ceased for '* Crazy Jane '^ 
Sbore and envy for the '* Laura Matildas '^ 
of cockneydom, for what they had re- 
pulsed as vulgar sprang up attractive and 
engaging in *' Neighbor Jackwood " and 
their ^' Neighbors' Wives." The New- 
England Mitford was among them, virile, 
true and lasting. The thread of such 
disclosures, sweet and fragrant, " climbed 
all over one," like the forest honeysuckle. 
The student in versification must notice 
the meet diction ; no long-drawn words to 
extend the sweetness — for, to use a perti- 
nent if homely analogy, nothing but mo- 
lasses candy is the better for being too 
fine-spun ; these words are never too 
" big for the age's mouth." It is not the 
refined white sugar but the clarified 
maple-sap, sweet enough for babes but 



S2 preface* 

strong enough for strong men. The 
gathering was obtained in the " freeze " 
and watchfully strained in the heat and 
smoke. The author does not ride the 
high horse that spurns the earth, but the 
Pegasus who once was harnessed with 
the plowhorse, and pulled his share of 
the furrow. Holmes sneered at this 
unpretentious manner as that of *' Mr. 
Smith and Mrs. Brown.'' Such may not 
be the volume for the bookcase under 
glass, but it is that hearty, wholesome 
dainty which passes from hand to hand, 
like the pound apple affording all the 
ring of boys a bite. 

There may be " fewer faults with 
greater beauties joined " — elsewhere — 
but this was the regale on the platform, 
on the stoop, and the post-office piazza, 



preface. 83 

" while the mail was coming in.^^ His 
native flowers may not allure the nymphs 
but they tease Giant Despair out of his 
lair. 

The most agreeable course for lan- 
guage acquisition is the oral one. For 
style, write out — for parleying, recite. 
Kossuth enchanted our fathers by an 
English learnt in bawling Shakespeare 
until the rhythm bound him to the proper 
intonation and accent. 

It is useless to hide the ^^ Open Ses- 
ame ! " now. It was the balmy unction 
carefully churned, skimmed and remolded 
from the new writer that made the sur- 
prising and eventful plots and exciting 
characters pass muster. In the last two 
or three decades American drollery has 
made the circuit of the globe, but the 



S4 preface* 

samples our subject lavished were rare 
and astonished ; he was an anticipator. 

American humor makes the girdle of 
the world, but our later sort was antici- 
pated by our author. Never since the 
ancients laughed over the chase of the 
" Golden Ass," with all its imitations, 
came up so superior a parallel as in the 
" Two Biddicut Boys " and one dog — such 
a dog ! In pursuing that tricky animal, 
the Damon and Pythias of humble life 
burst through an Odyssey fraught with 
hindrances overcome by sheer courage 
and persistent, impregnated with fun as 
a lubricator. 

This is naming but one specimen ; 
others will come up in a rim of mirth. 

Those unaware will never divine what 
rubbish this besom swept away. 



The faintly lingering and timorous 
repulsion of verses is due to the time 
when, as Latin was the refuge for what 
ought not to be said in a live tongue, 
unchaste phrases must lie hid in metre 
and involutions. That was why Mont- 
gomery was gulped and Byron's ^' Hebrew 
Melodies " strained at. 

In the poetry as well as in the prose, 
what our people look for as to their liking, 
since the " Pilgrim's Progress " solaced 
their hearts, appears without arrogantly 
proclaiming itself, the sound moral. It 
is not cold and pulseless like that statue 
bidden to the profligate's banquet, but 
human, exemplification of honor, honesty, 
gallantry, thorough sense, stanch affec- 
tion, and unflagging loyalty to the coun- 
try. The standfast faith is prominent, 



86 l^refacc* 

that what is for the best is closely around 
about us, right here on the all-compre- 
hensive earth that yields with the same 
abundance red and white onions as roses ; 
and bids the pie-plant flourish or ever the 
snowdrop delays melting. 

Furthermore, if all Trowbridge^s heart 
is not in his voice, as you follow it, you 
will find his winning frankness and hon- 
esty in his revelations ; '' My own Life,'* 
tracing all that era, not complimentary 
to Americans, which saw the alien replace 
at the mills those country maidens whom 
Charles Dickens glorified as the noblest 
spectacle in America — handmaidens who 
served morality and industry while they 
spun. 

" 'Tis not a' life, — 
'Tis but a piece of childhood," 



preface* 87 

boyhood and mauliood as unaging. You 
will see by this where he drew the unfail- 
ing store of refreshment in his poems 
and tales, the heroism of the plain coun- 
try boy. In Boston, he was constrained 
to depend on his pen, but it was not the 
standard English steel and the ink was 
no more strange ; it was the wild-goose 
quill and the poke-berry sap to write such 
veracity, and draw such life-like actors as 
run the mill, scout in war-times and carve 
out a career. In this freedom hence he 
stands out from his coevals, a Mark An- 
tony — '' Caesar being very much like 
Pompey." After all, in the target of 
popular approval, he hits plum'-centre, 
with his ball run, like the old hunter's, 
in his own mold. 

As story-teller and truth-teller, and a 



speaker, eye to eye, our wishes have 
borne good luck, for he is not spoilt at 
sixty ; he still is buoyed up by the same 
hope, lofty, holy, unworldly, which he 
impressed on his contemporary youth 
and their successors. Before the War, he 
was a pilot who taught captains ; now he 
is the past-admiral whose counsels are 
sought and heeded. In short, his hand 
is on the helm. 

In this sedentary age, when man is 
always sitting — at the desk, the table, in 
the motor-carriage, — the idea is too gen- 
eral that all can be done by the hand on 
the telephone-sender. Men stay away 
from political meetings and declare the 
art of ^' speechifying " is lost. Without 
diverging to politics, one little fact will 
gainsay all that. Lincoln's stump-speak- 



^tdatt. 89 

ing laid the track that had its terminus 
in Washington, remember ! and with a 
better schooling, but no less " live-voice ^' 
appeals, the orator Bryan amazed the 
Conventions — he devoted his youth to 
studying native eloquence, and his riper 
days to debating and recitation. This 
elocutionary process, disparaged by the 
obtuse and the indolent, elevated, distin- 
guished and made Trowbridge inviting, 
when not inglorious poets were feeding 
the worm in lumber-rooms. The days 
we conned might not occupy space 
in Cyclopaedias, but they spangle the 
^' Readers," which you will not find now 
but well-thumbed, ^^ the First to the 
Sixth." Phoebus may spurn McGuffey as 
not euphonious in name, but he was by his 
selections a benefactor. They were step- 



90 preface* 

ping-stones from the ^' little Red School- 
house " to the great White One at 
Washington. But Mrs. Grundy could 
not transfix anything inadmissible in 
them ; so Trowbridge's were snapped 
up. 

It may be without logical explanation, 
but current themes are leaped at and 
quiescent yesterday as remote as the 
Flood. The sons of those who delighted 
in ^' Wars with the Indians," preferred 
the like to the novels their mothers 
esteemed — the Cherubinas, Nymphs of 
the Valley, or Gentle Zitellas. Amid 
the smoking batteries and cannon-ball- 
cut pines, '^ the played-out idees of furren 
countries " were replaced by the moving 
pictures of the first of the War Stories. 
It was those whose pages were blotted by 



preface* 9 1 

homesick tears and dried by fervent sighs. 
Farewell to old days and ways — done 
like the cocked hats and buckled shoes. 
Astonishing how the New England boy 
so soon caught the spark from the Camp- 
fire of the Republic in convulsions ; he 
was so communicative on a level that one 
in reading felt that strange conviction 
before a great actor that he is playing 
directly for 3^ou. 

In the previous stories, he discoursed 
to country folk, who never know what 
beauties are about them. Here he actu- 
ally opened the eyes to the expedients 
and reliances needed under fire. These 
Trowbridge books, therefore, taught the 
honored relics of '' our Little Brotherly 
Difficulty," comforted them and spurred 
them, as far as their influence could go, 



92 preface* 

into making our second grand historical 
epoch. Hurriedly read by the screened 
bivouac fire, and thrust into the coat 
bosom at the alarm gun, they served to 
glance off the Minie bullet as well and 
more decorously than the traditional card- 
pack ; and — interesting token of how- 
good literature is distributed — copies were 
exchanged for tobacco with the pickets of 
'^ the Other Side." His constancy to the 
cardinal points of honor and manhood, 
cause these works to be another '' Waver- 
ley," by which the Northerner was agree- 
ably constrained to clasp hands with the 
Southron. His vein, in the colliding 
parties and opinions run clear, pure and 
untarnished like the thread of gold in a 
rich fabric ; when it falls apart in time, 
the imperishable connection is good and 



^ttfatt. 93 

new and still invaluable : it serves for- 
ever. Posterity and the newly landed 
emigrant will compreliend much that is 
enigmatical to them by these adventure 
pictures, veracious and preternaturally 
sympathetic with all that won the tribute 
due valor, patience, manhood and sol- 
dierly esteem. Who has not fled from 
ennui in '' Cudjo's Cave ; " followed the 
^' Three Scouts " in Indian file amid the 
gunfire of an enemy that were out '' coon- 
ing ; " or cut off ^' Coupon Bonds," when 
a red cent was scarce as Red Indians? 
With the pen he has left his mark on 
the hecatomb, and heroism is elevated 
into sight by his tribute as the granite 
base upholds the fine marble. Without 
fulsomely flattering or recklessly blam- 



94 preface* 

ing our brotlier, bravely misled, the fair 
play authorizes his national chronicle to 
be read, by the Suwanee as by the Mer- 
rimac. 



THE VAGABONDS. 







THE VAGABONDS. 



We are two travellers, Roger and I. 

Roger 's my dog. — Come here, you 

scamp ! 

Jump for the gentlemen, — mind your eye ! 

Over the table, — look out for the lamp ! — 

97 



98 €l)e Bagafionti^. 

The rogue is growing a little old ; 

Five years we Ve tramped through wind 
and weather, 
And slept out-doors when nights were 
cold, 
And ate and drank — and starved — to- 
gether. 

We 've learned what comfort is, I tell you ! 

A bed on the floor, a bit of rosin, 
A fire to thaw our thumbs (poor fellow ! 
The paw he holds up there 's been 
frozen), 
Plenty of catgut for my fiddle 

(This out-door business is bad for 
strings), 
Then a few nice buckwheats hot from the 
griddle. 
And Roger and I set up for kings ! 



€l)e lE>agabonti^* 



09 




1 » 



too €t)e t^agabonb^^ 

No, tliank ye, Sir, — I never drink ; 

Roger and I are exceedingly moral, — 
Are n't we, Roger ? — See him wink ! — 
Well, something hot, then, — we won't 
quarrel. 
He 's thirsty, too, — see him nod his 
head ? 
What a pity, Sir, that dogs can't talk ? 
He understands every word that 's said, — 
And he knows good milk from water- 
and-chalk. 

The truth is, Sir, now I reflect, 
I 've been so sadly given to grog, 

I wonder I 've not lost the respect 

(Here 's to you, Sir !) even of my dog. 

But he sticks by, through thick and thin ; 
And this old coat, with its empty 
pockets. 



€lje BagafionDi^* 



101 



And rags that smell of tobacco and gin, 
He '11 follow while he has eyes in his 
sockets. 




'^/-•^y-y^/'.i- 



There is n't another creature living 

Would do it, and prove, through every 
disaster. 
So fond, so faithful, and so forgiving, 



102 €l)e l^agafionti^. 

To sucli a miserable thankless master ! 
No, Sir ! — see him wag his tail and 
grin ! 
By George ! it makes my old eyes 
water ! 
That is, there's something in this gin 
That chokes a fellow. But no matter ! 

Yv^e '11 have some music, if you 're willing^ 
And Roger here (what a plague a cough 
is, Sir,) 

Shall march a little Start, you villain ! 

Paws up ! Eyes front ! Salute your 
officer ! 
'Bout face ! Attention ! Take your rifle ! 
(Some dogs have arms, you see !) Now 
hold your ^ 

Cap while the gentlemen give a trifle. 
To aid a poor old patriot soldier ! 



€l)e BagaftouD^* 



103 




':D<3ri'i^ 



104 €l)e l^agafionti^. 

March 1 Halt ! Now sHow how the rebel 
shakes, 
When he stands up to hear his sentence. 
, Now tell us how many drams it takes 
; To honor a jolly new acquaintance. 
Five yelps, — that 's five; he 's mighty 
knowing ! 
The night's before us, fill the glasses ! — 
Quick, Sir ! I'm ill, — my brain is 
going !— 
Some brandy, — thank you, — there ! — 
it passes ! 

' Why not reform ? That 's easily said ; 
But I 've gone through such wretched 
treatment, 
Sometimes forgetting the taste of bread, 
And scarce remembering what meat 
meant, 



That my poor stomach 's past reform ; 

And there are times when, mad with 
thinking, 
I ^d sell out heaven for something warm 

To prop a horrible inward sinking. 

Is there a way to forget to think ? 

At your age. Sir, home, fortune, friends, 
A dear girl's love, — but I took to drink ; — 
The same old story ; you know how it 
ends. 
If you could have seen these classic 
features, — 
You need n't laugh. Sir ; they were not 
then 
Such a burning libel on God's creatures : 
I was one of your handsome men ! 

If you had seen HER, so fair and young, 
Whose head was happy on this breast I 



106 €J)e Bagafionti^. 

If you could have heard the songs I sung 
When the wine went round, you 
would n't have guessed 

That ever I, Sir, should be straying 
From door to door, with fiddle and dog, 

Ragged and penniless, and playing 
For you to-night for a glass of grog ! 

She 's married since, — a parson's wife : 
'T was better for her that we should 
part, — 
Better the soberest, prosiest life 

Than a blasted home and a broken heart. 
I have seen her? Once: I was weak and 
spent 
On the dusty road : a carriage stopped : 
But little she dreamed, as on she went, 
Who kissed the 'coin that her fingers 
dropped ! 



€l)e BagaSontiiB?* 



107 




108 Cl^e l^agafionti^* 

You Ve set me talking, Sir ; I'm sorry ; 
It makes me wild to think of the 
change ! 
What do you care for a beggar's story ? 

Is it amusing ? you find it strange ? 
I had a mother so proud of me ! 

'T was well she died before Do 

you know 
If the happy spirits in heaven can see 
The ruin and wretchedness here be- 
low? 

Another glass, and strong, to deaden 
This pain ; then Roger and I will 
start. 
^I wonder, has he such a lumpish, leaden, 

Aching thing, in place of a heart? 
^'He is sad sometimes, and would weep, if 
he could, 



€l)e BagaBontiiB?, 



109 



-t;^.-^ 



« '\ "^ 







110 €{)e ©agafionb^. 

No doubt, remembering things that 
were, — 
A virtuous kennel, with plenty of food, 
And himself a sober, respectable cur. 

I ^m better now; that glass was warm- 
incr — 

You rascal ! limber your lazy feet ! 
We must be fiddling and performing 
For supper and bed, or starve in the 
street. 
Not a very gay life to lead, you think? 
But soon w^e shall go where lodgings 
• are free, 
And the sleepers need neither victuals 
nor drink ; — 
The sooner, the better for Roger and 
me ! 



€&e BagabouD^* 



111 




MISCELLANEOUS. 



BY THE RIVERo 
I. 

In the beautiful greenwood's charmed 

light, 

And down th rough the meadows wide and 

bright, 
Deep in the silence, and smooth in the 

gleam, 
For ever and ever flows the stream. 

Where the mandrakes grow, and the pale^ 

thin grass 

The airy scarf of the woodland weaves, 

By dim, enchanted paths I pass. 

Crushing the twigs and the last year's 

leaves. 

115 



116 25p tl^e Utixtt. 

Over tlie wave, by the crystal brink, 
A kingfisher sits on a low, dead limb : 
He is always sitting there, I think, — 
And another, within the crystal brink, 
Is always looking up at him. 

I know where an old tree leans across 
From bank to bank, an ancient tree. 
Quaintly cushioned with curious moss, 
A bridge for the cool wood-nymphs and me: 
Half seen they flit, while here I sit 
By the magical water, watching it. 

In its bosom swims the fair phantasm 

Of a subterraneous azure chasm. 

So soft and clear, you would say the 

stream 
Was dreaminof of heaven a visible dream. 



25p ttje iHiben U7 

Where the noontide basks, and its warm 

rays tint 
The nettles and clover and scented mint^ 
And the crinkled airs, that curl and 

quiver. 
Drop their wreaths in the mirroring; 

river. 



) 



Under the shaggy magnificent drapery 
Of many a wild-woven native graper}^, — 
By ivy-bowers, and banks of violets, 
And golden hillocks, and emerald islets^ 
Along its sinuous shining bed. 
In sheets of splendor it lies outspread. 

In the twilight stillness and solitude 
Of green caves roofed by the brooding 
wood, 



118 25p tl)e iHibet* 

Where tlie woodbine swings, and beneath 

the trailing 
Sprays of the queenly elm-tree sailing, — 
Ey ribbed and wave-worn ledges shim- 
mering, 
Gilding the rocks with a rippled glim- 
mering, 
All pictured over in shade and sun, 
The wavering silken waters run. 

Upon this mossy trunk I sit, 
Over the river, watching it, 
A shadowed face peers up at me ; 
And another tree in the chasm I see, 
Clinging above the abyss it spans ; 
The broad boughs curve their spreading 
fans. 



25p tt^t Mihtt. 110' 

From side to side, in the netlier air ; 
And phantom birds in the phantom. 

branches 
Mimic the birds above ; and there, 
Oh ! far below, solemn and slow, 
The white clouds roll the crumbling snow 
Of ever-pendulous avalanches. 
Till the brain grows giddy, gazing through. 
Their wild, wide rifts of bottomless blue. 

II. 

Through the river, and through the rifts 

Of the sundered earth I gaze, 

While Thought on dreamy pinion drifts,. 

Over cerulean bays. 

Into the deep ethereal sea 

Of her own serene eternity. 



120 25p tl)e Mtistu 

Transfigured by my tranced eye, 
Wood and meadow, and stream and sky, 
Like vistas of a vision lie : 
The World is the River that flickers by. 

Its skies are the blue-arched centuries ; 
And its forms are the transient images 
Flung on the flowing film of Time 
Ey the steadfast shores of a fadeless clime. 

As yonder wave-side willows grow, 
Substance above, and shadow below, 
The golden slopes of that upper sphere 
Hang their imperfect landscapes here. 

Fast by the Tree of Life, which shoots 
Duplicate forms from self-same roots, 
Under the fringes of Paradise, 
The crystal brim of the River lies. 



25p tl)e ^iotu 121 

There are banks of Peace, whose lilies 

pure 
Paint on the wave their portraiture ; 
And many a holy influence, 
That climbs to God like the breath of 

prayer, 
Creeps quivering into the glass of sense, 
To bless the immortals mirrored there. 



Through realms of Poesy, whose white 

cliffs 
Cloud its deeps with their hieroglyphs, 
Alpine fantasies heaped and wrought 
At will by the frolicsome winds of 

Thought, — 
By shores of Beauty, whose colors pass 
Faintly into the misty glass, — 



122 25p tl^e iSxljer* 

By hills of Truth, whose glories show 
Distorted, broken, and dimmed, as we 

know, — 
Kissed by the tremulous long green tress 
Of the glistening tree of Happiness, 
Which ever our aching grasp eludes 
With sweet illusive similitudes, — 
All pictured over in shade and gleam, 
For ever and ever runs the Stream. 

The orb that burns in the rifts of space 
Is the adumbration of God's Face, 
My Soul leans over the murmuring flow, 
And I am the image it sees below. 



THE PEWEE. 

The listening Dryads huslied the woods ; 

The boughs were thick, and thin and 
few 

The golden ribbons fluttering through ; 
Their sun-embroidered, leafy hoods 

The lindens lifted to the blue : 

Only a little forest-brook 

The farthest hem of silence shook : 

When in the hollow shades I heard — 

Was it a spirit or a bird ? 

Or, strayed from Eden, desolate, 

Some Peri calling to her mate, 

123 



124 €f)e ^etoee* 

Whom nevermore her mate would cheer? 
'' Pe-ri ! Pe-ri ! Peer ! '^ 

Through rocky clefts the brooklet fell 

With plashy pour, that scarce was 
sound, 

But only quiet less profound, 
A stillness fresh and audible : 

A yellow leaflet to the ground 
Whirled noiselessly : with wing of gloss 
A hovering sunbeam brushed the moss, 
And, wavering brightly over it. 
Sat like a butterfly alit : 
The owlet in his open door 
Stared roundly : while the breezes bore 

The plaint to far-off places drear, — 
" Pe-ree ! pe-ree ! peer ! '* 



€1)0 5^etDee. 125 

To trace it in its green retreat 

I sought among the boughs in vain ; 

And followed still the wandering strain, 
So melancholy and so sweet 

The dim-eyed violets yearned with pain. 
'T was now a sorrow in the air, 
Some nymph^s immortalized despair 
Haunting the woods and waterfalls ; 
And now, at long, sad intervals, 
Sitting unseen in dusky shade. 
His plaintive pipe some fairy played. 

With long-drawn cadence thin and 
clear, — 

" Pe-wee ! pe-wee ! peer ! '* 

Long-drawn and clear its closes were, — 
As if the hand of Music through 



126 €l^e ^etpee* 

The sombre robe of Silence drew 
A thread of golden gossamer : 

So sweet a flute the fairy blew. 
Like beggared princes of the wood, 
In silver rags the birches stood ; 
The hemlocks, lordly counsellors. 
Were dumb ; the sturdy servitors. 
In beechen jackets patched and gray, 
Seemed waiting spellbound all the day 

That low entrancing note to hear, — 
" Pe-wee ! pe-wee ! peer ! " 

I quit the search, and sat me down 
Beside the brook, irresolute. 
And watched a little bird in suit 

Of sober olive, soft and brown. 

Perched in the maple-branches, mute 



€l)e ^etoee* 127 

With greenish gold its vest was fringed, 
Its tiny cap was ebon-tinged, 
With ivory pale its wings were barred, 
And its dark eyes were tender-starred. 
*^ Dear bird," I said, " what is thy 

name? " 
And thrice the mournful answer came, 
So faint and far, and yet so near, — 
'' Pe-wee ! Pe-wee ! Peer ! '' 

For so I found my forest-bird, — 
The pewee of the loneliest woods, 
Sole singer in these solitudes. 

Which never robin's whistle stirred, 
Where never bluebird's plume intrudes. 

Quick darting through the dewy morn. 

The redstart trills his twittering horn, 



128 €l)e ^ctDee. 

And vanislieth : sometimes at even, 
Like liquid pearls fresh showered from 

heaven, 
The high notes of the lone wood-thrush 
Fall on the forest's holy hush : 

But thou all day complainest here, — 
'' Pe-wee ! pe-wee ! peer ! " 

Hast thou too, in thy little breast, 
Strange longings for a happier lot, — 
For love, for life, thou know^st not 
what, — 
A yearning, and a vague unrest. 

For something still which thou hast 
not? — 
Thou soul of some benighted child 
That perished, crying in the wild ! 



Or lost, forlorn, and wandering maid, 
By love allnred, by love betrayed. 
Whose spirit with her latest sigh 
Arose, a little winged cry, 

Above her chill and mossy bier! 
'' Dear me ! dear me ! dear! " 

Ah, no such piercing sorrow mars 
The pewee's life of cheerful ease ! 
He sings, or leaves his song to seize 
An insect sporting in the bars 

Of mild bright light that gild the 
trees. 
A very poet he ! For him 
All pleasant places still and dim : 
His heart, a spark of heavenly fire, 
Bums with undying, sweet desire : 



130 €l)e ^etoee^ 

And so he sings ; and so His song, 
Though heard not by the hurrying throng. 
Is solace to the pensive ear : 
" Pewee ! pewee ! peer ! " 



MY BROTHER AND I. 

From the door where I stand I can see 

his fair land 

Sloping tip to a broad sunny height, 

The meadows new-shorn, and the green 

wavy corn. 

The buckwheat all blossoming white : 

There a gay garden blooms, there are 

cedars like plumes. 

And a rill from the mountain leaps up in 

a fountain. 

And shakes its glad locks in the 

light. 

13t 



X32 pn? 2&rotl)cr anti ^. 

He dwells in the hall where the long 
shadows fall 
On the checkered and cool esplanade; 
I live in a cottage secluded and small, 
By a gnarly old apple-tree's shade : 
Side by side in the glen, I and ni}^ brother 

Ben, — 
Just the river between us, with borders as 
green as 
The banks where in childhood we 
played. 

But now nevermore upon river or shore 
He runs or he rows by my side ; 

For I am still poor, like our father be- 
fore, 
And he, full of riches and pride. 



Leads a life of such show, there is no 

room, you know. 
In the very fine carriage he gained by his 



marriage 



For an old-fashioned brother to ride. 



His wife, with her gold, gives him friends, 
I am told. 
With whom she is rather too gay, — 
The senator^s son, who is ready to run 
For her gloves and her fan, night or 
day. 
And to gallop beside, when she wishes to 

ride : 
Oh, no doubt 't is an honor to see smile 
upon her 
Such world-famous fellows as they ! 



134 JWip 25totl)er anti ^. 

AH, brother of mine, wHile you sport, 
while you dine. 
While you drink of your wine like a 
lord, 
You might curse, one would say, and 
grow jaundiced and gray, 
With such guests every day at your 
board ! 
But you sleek down your rage like a pard 

in its cage. 
And blink in meek fashion through the 
bars of your passion. 
As husbands like you can afford. 

For still you must think, as you eat, as 
you drink. 
As you hunt with your dogs and your 
guns, 



How your pleasures are bought with the 

wealth that she brought, 
And you were once hunted by duns. 
Oh, I envy you not your more fortunate 

lot: 
IVe a wife all my own in my own little 

cot. 
And with happiness, which is the only 

true riches. 
The cup of our love overruns. 

We have bright, rosy girls, fair as ever 

an earl's. 
And the wealth of their curls is our 

gold ; 
Oh, their lisp and their laugh, they are 

sweeter by half 



136 i^p 2I5cotl3cr anD S^* 

Than the wine that you quaff red and 

old! 

We have love-lighted looks, v^e have 

work, we have books, 

Our boys have grown manly and bold, 

And they never shall blush, when their 

proud cousins brush 
From the walls of their college such cob- 
webs of knowledge 
As careless young fingers may hold. 

Keep your pride and your cheer, for we 
need them not here, 
And for me far too dear they would prove ; 
For gold is but gloss, and possessions are 
dross, 
And gain is all loss, without love. 



Yon severing tide is not fordless or wide, — 
The souVs blue abysses our homesteads 

divide : 
Down tbrougli the still river they deepen 

forever, 
Like the skies it reflects from above. 

Still my brother thou art, though our 
lives lie apart, 
Path from path, heart from heart, more 
and more. 
Oh, I have not forgot, — oh, remember you 
• not 
Our room in the cot by the shore ? 
And a night soon will come, when the 
murmur and hum 
Of our days shall be dumb evermore, 



138 jmp ^vot^tt anD 2F. 

And again we shall lie side by side, you 

and I, 
Beneath the green cover you helped to lay 

over 
Our honest old father of yore. 



THE LAST RALLY. 

NOVEMBER, 1 864. 

Rally ! rally ! rally ! 

Arouse the slumbering land ! 
Rally ! rally ! from mountain and valley, 

And up from the ocean-strand ! 
Ye sons of the West, America's best ! 

New Hampshire's men of might ! 
From prairie and crag unfurl the flag, 

And rally to the fight ! 

Armies of untried heroes, 

Disguised in craftsman and clerk! 

Ye men of the coast, invincible host ! 

Come, every one, to the work, — 

139 



140 €^e %a^t Ifiallp* 

From the fisherman gray as the salt sea 
spray 
That on Long Island breaks, 
To the youth who tills the uttermost 
hills 
By the blue northwestern lakes ! 



And ye Freedmen ! rally, rally, 

To the banners of the North ! 
Through the shattered door of bondage 
pour 

Your swarthy legions forth ! 
Kentuckians ! ye of Tennessee 

Who scorned the despot's sway! 
To. all, to all, the bugle-call 

Of freedom sounds to-day ! 



Old men shall fight with the ballot, 

Weapon the last and best, — 
And the bayonet, with blood red-wet, 

Shall write the will of the rest ; 
And the boys shall fill men's places, 

And the little maiden rock 
Her doll as she sits with her grandam 
and knits 

An unknown hero's sock. 



And the hearts of heroic mothers, 

And the deeds of noble wives, 
With their power to bless shall aid no 
less 
Than the brave who give their 
lives. 



142 €1)0 Ita^t iSallp* 

The rich their gold shall bring, and the 
old 

Shall help ns with their prayers ; 
While hovering hosts of pallid ghosts 

Attend us unawares. 



From the ghastly fields of Shiloh 

Muster the phantom bands, 
From Virginia's swamps, and Death's 
white camps 

On Carolina sands ; 
From Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg, 

I see them gathering fast ; 
And up from Manassas, what is it that 
passes 

Like thin clouds in the blast ? 



€l)e Sla^t mallp. 143 

From the Wilderness, where blanches 

The nameless skeleton ; 
From Vicksburg's slaughter and red- 
streaked water, 

And the trenches of Donelson ; 
From the cruel, cruel prisons. 

Where their bodies pined away, 
From groaning decks, from sunken 
wrecks, 

They gather with us to-day. 



And they say to us, '^ Rally ! rally ! 

The work is almost done ! 
Ye harvesters, sally from mountain and 
valley 

And reap the fields we won ! 



144 €l)e %a^t iSallp. 

We sowed for endless years of peace, 
We Harrowed and watered well ; 

Our dying deeds were the scattered 
seeds : 
Shall they perish where they fell ? " 



And their brothers, left behind them 

In the deadly roar and clash 
Of cannon and sword, by fort and 
ford, 

And the carbine's quivering flash, — 
Before the Rebel citadel 

Just trembling to its fall. 
From Georgia's glens, from Florida's 
fens, 

For us they call, they call ! 



The life-blood of the tyrant 

Is ebbing fast away ; 
Victory waits at her opening gates, 

And smiles on our array ; 

With solemn eyes the Centuries 

Before us watching stand, 
And Love lets down his starry crown 

To bless the future land. 



One more sublime endeavor, 

And behold the dawn of Peace! 
One more endeavor, and war forever 

Throughout the land shall cease ! 
For ever and ever the vanquished power 

Of Slavery shall be slain. 
And Freedom's stained and trampled flower 

Shall blossom white again ! 



X46 €l)e %a^t Utallp^ 

Then rally ! rally ! rally ! 
Make tumult in the land ! 

Ye foresters, rally from mountain and 
valley ! 

Ye fishermen, from the strand ! 
Brave sons of the West, Americans best ! 

New England's men of might ! 
From prairie and crag unfurl the flag, 

And rally to the fight 1 



\ 1 



THE MASKERS. ^ 

Yesternight, as late as I strayed 

Through the orchard's mottled shade, — 

Coraing to the moonlit alleys, 

Where the sweet Southwind, that dallies 

All day with the Queen of Roses, 

All night on her breast reposes, — 

Drinking from the dewy blooms. 

Silences, and scented glooms 

Of the warm-breathed summer night, 

Long, deep draughts of pure delight, — 

Quick the shaken foliage parted, 

And from out its shadows darted 

X47 



148 €|)e pia^httg. 

Dwarf-like forms, with hideous faces, 

Cries, contortions, and grimaces. 

Still I stood beneath the lonely, 

Sighjpg lilacs, saying only,— 

" Little friends, you can't alarm me ; 

Well I know you would not harm me ! '* 

Straightway dropped each painted mask, 

Sword of lath, and paper casque, 

And a troop of rosy girls 

Ran and kissed me through their curls. 

Caught within their net of graces, 
I looked round on shining faces. 
Sweetly through the moonlit alleys 
Rang their laughter's silver sallies. 
Then along the pathway, light 
With the white bloom of the night. 



I went peaceful, pacing slow, 
Captive held in arms of snow. 
Happy maids ! of you I learn 
Heavenly maskers to discern ! 
So, when seeming griefs and harms 
Fill lifers garden with alarms, 
Through its inner walks enchanted 
I will ever move undaunted. 
Love hath messengers that borrow 
Tragic masks of fear and sorrow. 
When they come to do us kindness,— 
And but for our tears and blindness, 
We should see, through each disguise, 
Cherub cheeks and angel eyes. 



SERVICE. 

When I beheld a lover woo 

A maid unwilling, 
And saw what lavish deeds men do, 

Hope's flagon filling, — 
What vines are tilled, what wines are 
spilled. 

And madly wasted. 
To fill the flask that's never filled, 

And rarely tasted : 

Devouring all life's heritage, 

And inly starving ; 

Dulling the spirit's mystic edge. 

The banquet carving ; 

151 



152 ^erbice* 

Feasting with Pride, tliat Barmecide 

Of unreal dishes ; 
And wandering ever in a wide, 

Wide world of wishes : 

For gain or glory lands and seas 

Endlessly ranging, 
Safety and years and health and ease 

Freely exchanging ; 
Chiselling Humanity to dust 

Of glittering riches, 
God's blood- veined marble to a bust 

For Fame's cold niches : 

Desire's loose reins, and steed that stains 

The rider's raiment ; 
Sorrow and sacrifice and pains 

For worthless payment : — 



^erbice* 153 

When, ever as I moved, I saw 

The world's contagion. 
Then turned, O Love ! to thy sweet law 

And compensation, — 

Well might red shame my cheek consume ! 

service slighted ! 

O Bride of Paradise, to whom 

1 long was plighted ! 

Do I with burning lips profess 

To serve thee wholly, 
Yet labor less for blessedness 

Than fools for folly ? 

The wary worldling spread his toils 

Whilst I was sleeping ; 
The wakeful miser locked his spoils, 

Keen vigils keeping : 



154 cSerbice* 

I loosed the latches of my soul 

To pleading Pleasure, 
Who stayed one little hour, and stole 

My heavenly treasure. 

A friend for friend's sake will endure 

Sharp provocations ; 
And knaves are cunning to secure, 

By cringing patience, 
And smiles upon a smarting cheek, 

Some dear advantage, — 
Swathing their grievances in meek 

Submission's bandage. 

Yet for thy sake I will not take 

One drop of trial. 
But raise rebellious hands to break 

The bitter vial. 



At hardship's surly-visaged churl 

My spirit sallies ; 
And melts, O Peace ! thy priceless pearl 

In passion's chalice. 

Yet never quite, in darkest night, 

Was I forsaken : 
Down trickles still some starry rill 

My heart to waken. 
O Love Divine ! could I resign 

This changeful spirit 
To walk thy ways, what wealth of grace 

Might I inherit ! 

If one poor flower of thanks to thee 

Be truly given. 
All night thou snowest down to me 

Lilies of heaven ! 



156 «§erbice* 

One task of human love fulfilled, 

Thy glimpses tender 
My days of lonely labor gild 

With gleams of splendor ! 

One prayer, — ''Thy will, not mine!''— 
and bright, 

O'er all my being. 
Breaks blissful light, that gives to sight 

A subtler seeing ; 
Straightway mine ear is tuned to hear 

Ethereal numbers, 
Whose secret symphonies insphere 

The dull earth's slumbers. 

" Thy will ! " — and I am armed to meet 

Misfortune's volleys ; 
For every sorrow I have sweet, 

Oh, sweetest solace ! 



^erbice. 157 

" Thy will ! " — no more I hunger sore. 

For angels feed me ; 
Henceforth for days, by peaceful ways, 

They gently lead me. 

For me the diamond dawns are set 

In rings of beauty, 
And all my paths are dewy wet 

With pleasant duty ; 
Beneath the boughs of calm content 

My hammock swinging, 
In this green tent my eyes are spent, 

Feasting and singing. 



THE FROZEN HARBOR. 

When Winter encamps on our borders, 
And dips his white beard in the 
rills, 
And lays his shield over highway and 
field, 
And pitches his tents on the hills, — 
In the wan light I wake, and see on the 
lake, 
Like a glove by the night-winds blown. 
With fingers that crook up creek and 
brook. 

His shining gauntlet thrown. 

159 



160 €l)e frojeii 1$athtxt. 

Then over the lonely harbor, 

In the quiet and deadly cold 
Of a single night, when only the 
bright, 
Cold constellations behold, 
Without trestle or beam, without mortise 
or seam. 
It swiftly and silently spread 
A bridge as of steel, which a Titan^s 
heel 
In the early light might tread. 

Where Morning over the waters 

Her web of splendor spun. 
Till the wave, all a-twinkle with ripple 
and wrinkle, 

Hung shimmering in the sun, — 



€tje jprojen i^ar6ot* tat 

Where the liquid lip at the breast of the 
ship 
Whispered and laughed and kissed, 
And the long, dark streamer of smoke 
from the steamer 
Trailed off in the rose-tinted mist, — 

Now all is gray desolation, 

As up from the hoary coast, 
Over snow-fields and islands her white 
arms in silence 

Outspreading like a ghost, 
Her feet in shroud, her forehead in 
cloud. 

Pale walks the sheeted Dawn : 
The sea's blue rim lies shorn and dim, 

In the purple East withdrawn. 



162 €fte fto^tn i^arfior* 

Where floated the fleets of commerce, 

With proud breasts cleaving the tide, — 
Like emmet or bug with its burden, the 
tug 
Hither and thither plied, — 
Where the quick paddles flashed, where 
the dropped anchor plashed. 
And rattled the running chain, 
Where the merchantman swung in the 
current, where sung 
The sailors their far refrain, — 

Behold ! when ruddy Aurora - 

Peeps from her opening door, 
Faint gleams of the sun like fairies 

* 

run 
And sport on a crystal floor ; 



€I)e JFrD5en J^arBot* 163 

Upon the river^s bright panoply quivers 
The noon's resplendent lance ; 

And by night through the narrows the 
moon's slanted arrows 
Icily sparkle and glance. 



Flown are the flocks of commerce, 

Like wild swans hurrying south ; 
The lighter, belated, is frozen, full- 
freighted, 

Within the harbor's mouth ; 
The brigantine, homeward bringing 

Sweet spices from afar, 
All night must wait with her fragrant 
freight 

Below the lighthouse star. 



164 €1)0 fto3en I^arfiot. 

The ships at their anchors are frozen, 

From rudder to sloping chain : 
Rock-like they rise : the low sloop 
lies 
An oasis in the plain. 
Like reeds here and there, and tall masts 
bare 
Upspring : as on the edge 
Of a lawn smooth-shaven, around the 
haven 
The shipping grows like sedge. 

Here, weaving the union of cities. 
With hoar wakes belting the blue. 

From slip to slip, past schooner and 
ship. 
The ferry's shuttles flew : — 



€f)e frozen ]^ar6or. \65 

Now, loosed from its stall, on the yield- 
ing wall 
The steamboat paws and rears ; 
The citizens pass on a pavement of 
glass. 
And climb the frosted piers. 

Where, in the November twilight. 

To the ribs of the skeleton bark 
That stranded lay in the bend of the 
bay. 

Motionless, low, and dark. 
Came ever three shags, like three lone 
hags. 

And sat o'er the troubled water. 
Each nursing apart her shrivelled heart, 

With her mantle wrapped about her, — 



166 €t)e fto^m 1$athot. 

Now over the ancient timbers 

Is built a magic deck ; • 
Children run out with laughter and shout 

And dance around the wreck ; 
The fisherman near his long eel-spear 

Thrusts in through the ice, or stands 
With fingers on lips, and now and then 
whips 

His sides with mittened hands. 

Alone and pensive I wander 

Far out from the city-wharf 
To the buoy below in its cap of snow, 

Low stooping like a dwarf ; 
In the fading ray of the dull, brief day 

I wander and muse apart, — 
For this frozen sea is a symbol to me 

Of many a human heart. 



€l)e fro?cn I^arBor. 167 

I think of the hopes deep sunken 

Like anchors under the ice, — 
Of souls that wait for Love's sweet freight 

And the spices of Paradise : 
Far off their barks are tossing 

On the billows of unrest, 
And enter not in, for the hardness and 
sin 

That close the secret breast. 

I linger, until, at evening, 

The town-roofs, towering high, 
Uprear in the dimness their tall, dark 
chimneys. 
Indenting the sunset sky, 
And the pendent spear on the edge of the 
pier 



168 €t)c frojm i^atftor* 

Signals my homeward way, 
As It gleams through the dusk like a 
walrus's tusk 
On the floes of a polar bay. 



Then I think of the desolate house- 
holds 
On which the day shuts down, — 
What misery hides in the darkened 
tides 
Of life in yonder town ! 
I think of the lonely poet 

In his hours of coldness and pain, 
His fancies full-freighted, like lighters 
belated. 
All frozen within his brain. 



€l)e 5fro?en l^arbor* 169 

And I hearken to the meanings 

That come from the burdened bay : 
As a camel, that kneels for his lading, 
reels, 

And cannot bear it away, 
The mighty load is slowly 

Upheaved with struggle and pain 
From centre to side, then the groaning 
tide 

Sinks heavily down again. 



So day and night you may hear it 

Panting beneath its pack, 
Till sailor and saw, till south wind and 
thaw, 

Unbind it from its back. 



170 €J)e fto^tn l^atBot. 

O Sun ! will thy beam ever gladden the 
stream 
And bid its burden depart ? 
O Life ! all in vain do we strive with the 
chain 
That fetters and chills the heart ? 

Already in vision prophetic 

On yonder height I stand : 
The gulls are gay upon the bay, 

The swallows on the land ; — 
'Tis spring-time now; like an aspen- 
bough 

Shaken across the sky, 
In the silvery light with twinkling i 
flight 

The rustling plovers fly. 



€f)e f ro5en i^arfior* 171 

Aloft in the sunlit cordage 
Behold the climbing tar, 
With his shadow beside on the sail white 
and wide, 
Climbing a shadow-spar ! 
Up the glassy stream with issuing 
steam 
The cutter crawls again. 
All winged with cloud and buzzing 
loud, 
Like a bee upon the pane. 



The brigantine is bringing 
Her cargo to the quay, 

The sloop flits by like a butterfly, 
The schooner skims the sea. 



172 €l)e frozen I^arBor. 

O young hearths trust, beneath the 
crust 

Of a chilling world congealed ! 
O love, whose flow the winter of woe 

With its icy hand hath sealed ! 

Learn patience from the lesson ! 

Though the night be drear and long, 
To the darkest sorrow there comes a 
morrow, 
A right to every wrong. t 

And as, when, having run his low course, 
the red Sun 
Comes charging gayly up here. 
The white shield of Winter shall shiver 
and splinter 
At the touch of his golden spear, — 



Then rushing under the bridges, 
And crushing among the piles, 
In gray mottled masses the drift-ice 
passes, 
Like seaward floating isles ; — 
So Life shall return from its solstice, and 
burn 
In trappings of gold and blue, 
The world shall pass like a shattered 
glass. 
And the heaven of Love shine through. 



THE JAGUAR HUNT. 

The dark jaguar was abroad in the land ; 
His strength and his fierceness what foe 

could withstand ? 
The breath of his anger was hot on the 

air, 
And the white lamb of Peace he had 

dragged to his lair. 

Then up rose the Farmer ; he summoned 

his sons : 

** Now saddle your horses, now look to 

your guns ! '* 

175 



176 €l)e 3^a0uar i^unt* 

And lie called to his hound, as he sprang 

from the ground 
To the back of his black pawing steed 

with a bound. 

Oh, their hearts, at the word, how they 

tingled and stirred ! 
They followed, all belted and booted and 

spurred. 
" Buckle tight, boys ! ^' said he, " for who 

gallops with me, 
Such a hunt as was never before he shall 

see ! 

" This traitor, we know him ! for when he 

was younger. 
We flattered him, patted him, fed his 

fierce hunger: 



But now far too long we have borne witk 

the wrong, 
For each morsel we tossed makes him. 

savage and strong." 

Then said one, " He must die I ** And 

they took up the cry, 
" For this last crime of his he must die L 

he must die ! " 
But the slow eldest-born sauntered sad 

and forlorn, 
For his heart was at home on that fair 

hunting-morn. 

" I remember," he said, " how this fine cub 

we track 
Has carried me many a time on his- 

back ! " 



178 €l)e S^aguar i^unt* 

And he called to his brothers, " Fight 
gently ! be kind ! ^^ 

And he kept the dread hound, Retri- 
bution, behind. 

The dark jaguar on a bough in the 

brake 
Crouched, silent and wily, and lithe as a 

snake : 
They spied not their game, but, as onward 

they came. 
Through the dense leafage gleamed two 

red eyeballs of flame. 

Black-spotted, and mottled, and whis- 
kered, and grim. 

White-bellied, and yellow, he lay on the 
limb. 



All so still that you saw but just one 

tawny paw 
Lightly reach through the leaves and as 

softly withdraw. 

Then shrilled his fierce cry, as the riders 

drew nigh, 
And he shot from the bough like a bolt 

from the sky : 
In the foremost he fastened his fangs as 

he fell, 
While all the black jungle reechoed his 

yell. 

Oh, then there was carnage by field and 

by flood ! 
The green sod was crimsoned, the rivers 

ran blood, 



180 €t)e S^aguar i^unt. . 

The cornfields were trampled, and all in 

tHeir track 
The beautiful valley lay blasted and 

black. 

Now the din of the conflict swells deadly 

and loud, 
And the dust of the tumult rolls up like 

a cloud : 

Then afar down the slope of the South- 
land recedes 

The wild rapid clatter of galloping steeds. 

With wide nostrils smoking, and flanks 

dripping gore, 
The black stallion bore his bold rider 

before, 



€f)e ^aguat J^unt* isi 

As onward they thundered through forest 

and glen, 
A-hunting the dark jaguar to his den. 

In April, sweet April, the chase was 

begun ; 
It was April again, when the hunting 

was done : 
The snows of four winters and four sum- 
mers gree' 

Lay red-streaked and trodden and blighted 
between. 

Then the monster stretched all his grim 

length on the ground ; 

His life-blood was wasting from many a 
wound ; 



IS2 €1)0 Sasuar i$mu 

Ferocious and gory and snarling he lay, 
Amid heaps of the whitening bones of his 
prey. 

Then up spoke the slow eldest son, and 

he said, 
^* All he needs now is just to be fostered 

and fed ! 
G-ive over the strife ! Brothers, put up 

the knife ! 
We will tame him, reclaim him, but take 

not his life ! " 

But the Farmer flung back the false 

words in his face : 
** He is none of my race, who gives 

counsel so base ! 



Now let loose the hound ! " And the 

hound was unbound, 
And like lightning the heart of the 

traitor he found. 

" So rapine and treason forever shall 

cease ! " 
And they wash the stained fleece of the 

pale lamb of Peace ; 
When, lo ! a strong angel stands winged 

and white 
In a wonderful raiment of ravishing light I 

Peace is raised from the dead ! In the 

radiance shed 
By the halo of glory that shines round 

her head, 



184 €^e S^aguar 1$nnu 

Pair gardens shall bloom where the black 

jungle grew, 
And all the glad valley shall blossom 

anew! 



BEYOND. 

From her own far dominions, 
Long since, with shorn pinions, 
My spirit was banished : 
But above her still hover, in vigils and 

dreams, 
Ethereal visitants, voices, and gleams. 
That forever remind her 
Of something behind her 
Long vanished. 

Through the listening night, 

With mysterious flight, 

185 



136 23cponti. 

Pass those winged intimations : 
Like stars shot from heaven, their still 

voices fall to me ; 
Far and departing, they signal and call to 
me. 
Strangely beseeching me, 
Chiding, yet teaching me 
Patience. 



Then at times, oh ! at times, 
To their luminous climes 
I pursue as a swallow ! 
To the river of Peace, and its solacing 
shades, 

« 

To the haunts of my lost ones, in heavenly 
glades, 



2&eponD. 187 

With strong aspirations 
Their pinions^ vibrations 
I follow. 

O heart, be thou patient ! 
Though here I am stationed 
A season in durance, 
The chain of the world I will cheerfully 

wear ; 
For, spanning my soul like a rainbow, I 
bear, 
With the yoke of my lowly 
Condition, a holy 
Assurance, — 

That never in vain 
Does the spirit maintain 



188 SBcponti* 

Her eternal allegiance : 
Through suffering and yearning, like In- 
fancy learning 
Its lesson, we linger ; then skyward 
returning, 
On plumes fully grown 
We depart to our own 
Native regions ! 



THE CUP. 

The cup I sing is a cup of gold, 
Many and many a century old, 
Sculptured fair, and over-filled 
With wine of a generous vintage, spilled 
In crystal currents and foaming tides 
All round its luminous, pictured sides. 

Old Time enamelled and embossed 

This ancient cup at an infinite cost. 

Its frame he wrought of metal that run 

Red from the furnace of the sun. 

Ages on ages slowly rolled 

Before the glowing mass was cold, 

X89 



190 €I)c €up. 

And still he toiled at the antique mould, — 
Turning it fast in his fashioning hand> 
Tracing circle, layer, and band, 
Carving figures quaint and strange. 
Pursuing, through many a wondrous 

change, 
The symmetry of a plan divine. 
At last he poured the lustrous wine. 
Crowned high the radiant wave with light^ 
And held aloft the goblet bright, 
Half in shadow, and wreathed in mist 
Of purple, amber, and amethyst. 

This is the goblet from whose brink 
All creatures that have life must drink : 
Foemen and lovers, haughty lord 
And sallow beggar with lips abhorred. 



€f)e Cup* 19 1 

The new-born infant, ere it gain 

The mother's breast, this wine must 

drain. 
The oak with its subtile juice is fed, 
The rose drinks till her cheeks are red, 
And the dimpled, dainty violet sips 
The limpid stream with loving lips. 
It holds the blood of sun and star, 
And all pure essences that are : 
No fruit so high on the heavenly vine, 
Whose golden hanging clusters shine 
On the far-off shadowy midnight hills, 
But some sweet influence it distils 
That slideth down the silvery rills. 
Here Wisdom drowned her dangerous 

thought, 
The early gods their secrets brought ; 



192 €1)0 Cup. 

Beauty, in quivering lines of light, 
Ripples before tlie ravished sight ; 
And the unseen mystic spheres combine 
To charm the cup and drug the wine. 
All day I drink of the wine and deep 
In its stainless waves my senses steep ; 
All night my peaceful soul lies drowned 
In hollows of the cup profound ; 
Again each morn I clamber up 
The emerald crater of the cup, 
On massive knobs of jasper stand 
And view the azure ring expand : 
I watch the foam-wreaths toss and swim 
In the wine that overruns the jewelled 

rim. 
Edges of chrysolite emerge. 
Dawn-tinted, from the misty surge ; 






€1)0 Cup* 193 

My thrilled, uncovered front I lave, 

My eager senses kiss the wave, 

And drain, with its viewless draught, the 

lore 
That warmeth the bosom*s secret core, 
And the fire that maddens the poet^s brain 
With wild sweet ardor and heavenly pain. 




WAS a fortress to be 

stormed : 

Boldly right in view they 

formed, 

All as quiet as a regiment 

parading : 
195 



196 €J)e Color ^2&earm 

Then in front a line of flame ! 
Then at left and right the same ! 
Two platoons received a fnrious enfilad- 
ing. 

« 

To their places still they filed, 
And they smiled at the wild 
Cannonading. 

" 'T will be over in an honr! 
^T will not be mnch of a shower ! 
Never mind, my boys," said he, " a little 
drizzling ! " 
Then to cross that fatal plain. 
Through the whirring, hurtling 
rain 
Of the grape-shot, and the minie-bullets' 
whistling ! 



€f>e €tAot^^tattt. 197 

But lie notliing heeds nor shuns, . 
As he runs with the guns 
Brightly bristling ! 

Leaving trails of dead and dying 
In their track, yet forward flying 
Like a breaker where the gale of conflict 
rolled them, 
With a foam of flashing light 
Borne before them on their bright 
Burnished barrels, — O, 'twas fearful to 
behold them ! 
While from ramparts roaring loud 
Swept a cloud like a shroud 
To enfold them ! 

O, his color was the first ! 

Through the burying cloud he burst, 



198 ^i^t €o\ot^^tattt. 

With the standard to the battle forward 
slanted ! 
Through the belching, blinding breath 
Of the flaming jaws of Death, 
Till his banner on the bastion he had 
planted ! 
By the screaming shot that fell, 
And the yell of the shell, 
Nothing daunted. 

Right against the bulwark dashing. 
Over tangled branches crashing, 

'Mid the plunging volleys thundering 
ever louder ! 
There he clambers, there he stands. 
With the ensign in his hands, — 

O, was ever hero handsomer or prouder ? 



€l)e Color ^2Bearer. 199 

Streaked with battle-sweat and slime, 
And sublime in the grime 
Of the powder ! 

'Twas six minutes, at the least, 
Ere the closing combat ceased, — 
Near as we the mighty moments then 
could measure, — 
And we held our souls with awe, 
Till his haughty flag we saw 
On the lifting vapors drifting o^er the 
embrasure ! 
Saw it glimmer in our tears, 
While our ears heard the cheers 
Rend the azure! 

Through the abatis they broke, 
Through the surging cannon-smoke, 



200 €l^e €oIor::^2&earet* 

And they drove tlie foe before like fright- 
ened cattle ! 
O, but never wound was his, 
For in other wars than this, 
Where the volleys of Life's conflict roar 
and rattle, 
He must still, as he was wont, 
In the front bear the brunt 
Of the battle. 



He shall guide the van of Truth ! 
And in manhood, as in youth. 
Be her fearless, be her peerless Color- 
Bearer ! 
With his high and bright example, 
Like a banner brave and ample, 



Ever leading through receding clouds of 
Error, 
To the empire of the Strong, 
And to Wrong he shall long 
Be a terror I 




THE WONDERFUL SACK. 

The apple-bouglis half hid the house 
Where lived the lonely widow ; 

Behind it stood the chestnut wood, 
Before it spread the meadow. 



She had no money in her till, 

She was too poor to borrow ; 

With her lame leg she could not beg ; 

And no one cheered her sorrow. 

203 



204 €l)e Wmhttfnl ^ath. 

SHe Had no wood to cook her food, 
And but one chair to sit in ; 

Last spring she lost a cow, that cost 
A whole year's steady knitting. 

She had worn her fingers to the bone, 
Her back was growing double ; 

One day the pig tore up her wig, — 
But that's not half her trouble. 

Her best black gown was faded brown, 
Her shoes were all in tatters, 

With not a pair for Sunday wear : 
Said she, " It little matters ! 

" Nobody asks me now to ride, 
My garments are not fitting ; 



€l)e B^ontierful ^atft. 205 

And with my crutch I care not much 
To hobble off to meeting. 

*^ I still preserve my Testament, 
And though the Ac^s are missing, 

And Luke is torn, and Hebrews worn, 
On Sunday 't is a blessing. 



<i 



And other days I open it 
Before me on the table. 
And there I sit, and read, and knit, 
As long as I am able." 

One evening she had closed the book, 
But still she sat there knitting ; 

^^ Meow-meow ! " complained the old black 
cat; 
** Mew-mew ! " the spotted kitten. 



200 €^e 9^ontierful ^ath. 

And on the hearth, with sober mirth, 
^^ Chirp, chirp ! " replied the cricket. 

'T was dark,— but hark ! " " Bow-ow ! '' 
the bark 
Of Ranger at the wicket ! 

Is Ranger barking at the moon ? 

Or what can be the matter ? 
What trouble now ? ^^ Bow-ow ! bow- 
ow ! "— 

She hears the old gate clatter. 

" It is the wind that bangs the gate, 
And I must knit my stocking ! " 

But hush ! — what's that? Rat-tat! rat- 
tat! 
Alas ! there's some one knocking ! 



€l)e Wonhttfnl ^acfe* 207 

** Dear me ! dear me ! who can it be ? 

Where, where is my crutch-handle ? " 
She rubs a match with hasty scratch, 

She cannot light the candle ! 

Rat-tat ! scratch, scratch ! the worthless 
match ! 
The cat growls in the corner. 
Rat-tat ! scratch, scratch ! Up flies the 
latch, — 
" Good evening, Mrs. Warner ! ** 

The kitten spits and lifts her back, 
Her eyes glare on the stranger ; 

The old cat^s tail ruffs big and 
black, 
Loud barks the old dog Ranger ! 



20S €l)e ^ontierful ^acft* 

Blue burns at last the tardy match, 
And dim the candle glimmers ; 

Along the floor beside the door 

The cold white moonlight shimmers. 

" Sit down ! " — the widow gives her chair. 

** Get out! " she says to Ranger. 
" Alas ! I do not know your name." 

" No matter ! " quoth the stranger. 

His limbs are strong, his beard is long, 

His hair is dark and wavy ; 
Upon his back he bears a sack ; 

His staff is stout and heavy. 

" My way is lost, and with the frost 
I feel my fingers tingle." 



Then from his back he slips the sack, — 
Ho ! did you hear it jingle ? 

** Nay, keep your chair! while you sit 
there, 

I'll take the other corner." 
" I'm sorry, sir, I have no fire ! " 

" No matter, Mrs. Warner ! " 

He shakes his sack, — the magic sack ! 

Amazed the widow gazes ! 
Ho, ho ! the chimney's full of wood ! 

Ha, ha ! the wood it blazes ! 

Ho, ho ! ha, ha ! the merry fire ! 

It sputters and it crackles ! 
Snap, snap ! flash, flash ! old oak and ash 

Send out a million sparkles. 



210 €l)e ^ontierful J^atft. 

The stranger sits upon his sack 

Beside the chimney-corner, 
And rubs his hands before the brands, 

And smiles on Mrs. Warner. 

She feels her heart beat fast with fear, 
But what can be the danger ? 

*^ Can I do aught for you, kind sir ? " 
" I^m hungry ! ^* quoth the stranger. 

" Alas ! " she said, " I have no food 

For boiling or for baking ! " 
" IVe food," quoth he, " for you and me ! " 

And gave his sack a shaking. 

Out rattled knives, and forks, and spoons ! 
Twelve eggs, potatoes plenty ! 



One large soup dish, two plates of fisH, 
And bread enough for twenty ! 

And Rachel, calming her surprise, 

As well as she was able. 
Saw, following these, two roasted geese, 

A tea-urn, and a table! 

Strange, was it not? each dish was hot. 
Not even a plate was broken ; 

The cloth was laid, and all arrayed, 
Before a word was spoken ! 

** Sit up ! sit up ! and we will sup, 
Dear madam, while we 're able ! " 

Said she, *' The room is poor and small 
For such a famous table ! " 



212 €l^c 53^ontietful M>ack. 

Again the stranger shakes the sack, 

The walls begin to rumble ! 
Another shake ! the rafters quake ! 

You 'd think the roof would tumble ! 

Shake, shake ! the room grows high and 
large, 

The walls are painted over ! 
Shake, shake ! out fall four chairs, in all, 

A bureau, and a sofa ! 

The stranger stops to wipe the sweat 
That down his face is streaming. 

*^ Sit up 1 sit up ! and we will sup," 
Quoth he, *' while all is steaming ! " 

The widow hobbled on her crutch , 
He kindly sprang to aid her. 



€f)e WmhttM ^acft. 213 

"All this," said she, " is too much forme! " 
Quoth he, " We^U have a waiter ! " 

Shake, shake, once more ! and from the 
sack 

Out popped a little fellow. 
With elbows bare, bright eyes, sleek hair, 

And trousers striped with yellow. 

His legs were short, his body plump, 
His cheek was like a cherry ; 

He turned three times ; he gave a jump ; 
His laugh rang loud and merry ! 

He placed his hand upon his heart, 
And scraped and bowed so handy ! 

" Your humble servant, sir," he said, 
Like any little dandy. 



214 €J)e ^^ontierful ^acfe. 

The widow laughed a long, loud laugh, 
And up she started, screaming ; 

When ho ! and lo ! the room was dark ! — 
She'd been asleep and dreaming! 

The stranger and his magic sack, 

The dishes and the fishes, 
The geese and things, had taken wings, 

Like riches, or like witches ! 

All, all was gone ! She sat alone ; 

Her hands had dropped their knitting. 
" Meow-meow ! " the cat upon the mat ; 

" Mew-mew ! mew-mew ! " the kitten. 

The hearth is bleak, — and hark! the 
creak, — 
" Chirp-chirp ! " the lonesome cricket. 



€l)e ^ontjcrful M>atK 215 




216 €l)e WmtyttM ^atK 

" Bow-wow ! " says Ranger to the moon; 
The wind is at the wicket. 

And still she sits, and as she knits 

She ponders o^er the vision ; 
" I saw it written on the sack, — 

* A Cheerful Disposition.' 

" I know God sent the dream, and meant 

To teach this useful lesson, 
That out of peace and pure content 

Springs every earthly blessing ! *' 

Said she, "I'll make the sack my own I 
I'll shake away all sorrow ! " 

She shook the sack for me to-day ; 
She'll shake for you to-morrow. 



€l)e Wnnhtxfnl ^acK 2X7 

She shakes out hope ; and joy, and peace, 

And happiness come after ; 
She shakes out smiles for all the world ; 

She shakes out love and laughter. 

For poor and rich, — no matter which, — 
For young folks or for old folks. 

For strong and weak, for proud and meek, 
For warm folks and for cold folks ; 

For children coming home from school. 
And sometimes for the teacher ; 

For white and black, she shakes the 
sack, — 
In short, for every creature. 

And everybody who has grief. 
The suflEerer and the mourner, 



2X8 €f)e ^ontierful M>acK 

From far and near, come now to hear 
Kind words from Mrs. Warner. 

They go to her with heavy hearts, 
They come away with light ones : 

They go to her with cloudy brows, 
They come away with bright ones. 

All love her well, and I could tell 

Of many a cheering present 
Of fruits and things their friendship 
brings, 

To make her fireside pleasant. 

She always keeps a cheery fire ; 

The house is painted over ; 
She has food in store, and chairs for four, 

A bureau, and a sofa. 



€l^e 533ontierful ^acft. 219 

She says these seem just like her dream, 

And tells again the vision : 
" I saw it written on the sack, — 

* A Cheerful Disposition ! ' " 








THE WILD GOOSE. 

When gruff winter goes, and from under 

his snows 
Peeps the infantine clover, 
And little lambs shrink on the bleak hills 

of March, 

And April comes smiling beneath the blue 

arch ; 

221 



222 €l)c 9^xlti oBoo^e* 

Then tlie forester sees from His door the 
wild geese 
Flying over. 

Some to Winnipeg's shore ; those to cold 
Labrador ; 
Upon dark Memphremagog, 

Swift flying, loud crying, these soon shall 
alight, 

And station their sentries to guard them 
by night, 

Or marshal their ranks to the thick- 
wooded banks 
Of Umbagog. 

Now high in the sky, scarcely seen as 
they fly, 
Like the head of an arrow 



€l)e ?g^ilD 4Soo^e. 223 

Shot free from its shaft; then a dark- 
winged chain ; 
Or at eventide, wearily over the plain, 
Flying low, flying slow, sagging, lagging 
they go, 
Like a harrow. 

Soon all have departed, save one regal- 
hearted 
Sad prisoner only ; 

No more shall he breast the blue ether, or 
rest 

In the reeds with his mate, keeping guard 
by her nest, 

Never glide by her side down the green- 
fringed tide 
Fair and lonely. 



22^ €J)e Wi\^ 45ooi^e* 

With, clipped pinions, fast in a farm-yard, 
at last 
They have caged the sky-ranger ! 

*Mid the bustle and clucking and cackle 
of flocks, 

The gossip of geese, and the crowing of 
cocks ; 

But apart from the rest, with his proud- 
curving breast. 
Walks the stranger. 

He refuses, with scorn braving hunger, 

the corn 
From the hands of the givers, 
Like a prince in captivity pacing his path ; 
Little pleasure he hath in his low, stagnant 

bath; 



In that green, standing pool does he think 
of his cool 
Northern rivers ? 

Far away, far away, to some lone lake or 

bay 
His lost comrades are thronging ; 
In fancy he follows : he hears their glad 

halloos 
Round beautiful beaches, in bright plashy 

shallows : 
And now his dark eye he turns up at the 

sky 
With wild longing. 

He hears them all day, singing, winging 
their way, 
Over mountains and torrents, 



226 €f)e Wilts <&tio$t. 

To Canadian hills and their clear water- 



courses, 



To the Ottawa's springs, to the Saguenay's 



sources ; 



And now they are going far down the 
broad-flowing 
Saint Lawrence. 

Over grass-land and grove, searching inlet 

and cove. 
Speeds in dreams the wild gander ! 
He listens, he hastens, he screams on 

their track ; 
They hear him, they cheer him, they 

welcome him back. 
They shout his proud name, and with 

loud clamors claim 
Their Commander ! 



Past Huron and Saginaw, far over 
Mackinaw, 
To lovely Itaska, 
Tlieir leader lie goes ; every river lie 

knows ; 
They flock where the silver SaskatcHawan 

flows, 
Or sit lightly afloat upon high and remote 
Athabasca. 

With his consort he leads forth their 
young ones, and feeds 
By the pleasant morasses ; 

He shows them the tender 3^oung crab, 
and the bug, 

The small tented snail, and the slow 
mantled slug. 



22S €f)e B^ilD 4Booie?e. 

And laughs as they eat the soft seeds and 
the sweet 
Water-grasses. 

But danger is coming ! Lo, strutting and 
drumming 
The turkey-cock charges ! 

The bright fancy breaks, in the farm-yard 
he wakes ; 

Never more he alights on the blue linked 
lakes 

Of the North, or upsprings upon winnow- 
ing wings 
From their marges ! 

Here all the long summer abides the new- 
comer 
In chains ignominious, 



Abandoned, companionless, far from his 
mate; 

But his heart is still great though dis- 
honored his state, 

And his eyes still are dreaming of glad 
waters gleaming 
And sinuous. 

Then the rude Equinox drives before it 
the flocks 
Of his comrades returning ; 
They sail on the gale high above the Ohio's 
Broad ribbon, descending on prairies and 

bayous ; 
And again his dark eye is turned up at 
the sky 
With wild yearning. 



230 €f)e ^xlti 45co0t. 

As sunward they go, far below, far below, 

Coils tbe pale Susquehanna ! 
He sees them, far off in the twilight, en- 
camp as 
An army of souls upon dim, ruddy pampas ; 
Or at sunrise arrayed upon green ever- 
glade 
And savanna. 



So year after year, as their legions appear, 

His lost state he remembers ; 
Wondering and wistful he watches their 

flight, 

Or starts at their cries in the desolate night, 
Dropped down to his hearkening ear 
through the darkening 
Novembers. 



€t)e S^ilti 4BD0i0fe* 



231 




•OCT 7 1908 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 







8 604 123 9 0\ 



